


What Makes A Family

by GenericUsername01



Series: What Makes a Family [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fake Marriage, Fluff, Kid Fic, Lots of TOS references, M/M, Pon Farr, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, and tos relationships/dynamics, mentions of past trauma, telepathic bs as a plot point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-01-26 15:18:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 81,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12560300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: An AOS take on Saavik's backstory. One day, the Enterprise crosses into the Neutral Zone on a top secret mission to rescue some half-Vulcan, half-Romulan kids. Jim decides to adopt one of them. Only problem is, he's not a Vulcan citizen. Cue green card marriage.





	1. Exfiltration

Kirk drummed his fingers against the arms of the captain’s chair. He felt full to bursting with nervous, unspent energy. The entire bridge was taut with it and silent, except for the constant thrum of machinery and the occasional computerized reminder that they were at yellow alert. He saw Chekov jump slightly the next time it came, startling him out of the stillness.

He knew it had to be equally tense throughout the rest of the ship. He had instructed that battle stations be manned and that engineering be ready on standby in case they had to flee or do emergency repairs. McCoy was probably pacing around Sickbay, retaking inventory of his supplies even though he knew exactly how much he had, no doubt bugging Nurse Chapel out of her mind. He knew most of the crew had a phaser on them and set to stun or one higher, even though starship battles rarely involved crews boarding each other like pirate ships of old—that one swordfight with the Klingons notwithstanding.

Spock would call it illogical. Jim would explain that it’s for peace of mind.

“Now entering the Neutral Zone,” Sulu announced.

Kirk leaned forward in his chair and tensed even further, if that was possible. His knuckles were white gripping the armrests.

“How far out are we?” he couldn’t resist asking.

“Two point three-eight-seven minutes, Captain,” came Spock’s voice from behind him, calm and steely as ever.

Out of warp, it felt like the ship was creeping along. Kirk did not want to be in the Neutral Zone for a single second longer than necessary. Every minute that passed greatly increased their chances of getting blasted out of the sky and restarting a bloody decades-long war. He couldn’t have all those deaths on his head. He couldn’t.

Their orders to go into the Neutral Zone had come from the very top of Starfleet command, in a confidential message on an encrypted channel. This mission was highly classified and top secret. There were very few people on board who actually knew what they were doing here.

“Coming in to standard orbit.”

“Sulu, you have the conn. Mr. Spock, you’re with me.” He rose and strode out the door, glad he wasn’t shaking as he did so.

They were met in the transporter room by McCoy and three of the higher-ranking security officers. Bones looked pale as death, but he didn’t protest being brought along.

They clipped phasers and communicators into their belts in silence. A tricorder, a first aid kit.

“Energize.”

And light swirled around them.

They were in a dark hallway made of cement and stone, cold and slightly damp. The place was dead silent. The landing party flicked on flashlights on their communicators. Kirk commed the Enterprise to let them know they had beamed in safely.

Something was dripping in the distance. Their boots crunched on layers of grime with every step, slow and cautious, trying to tame the inevitable echo of their footsteps. Spock seemed to be the only one having any luck at it.

He flipped on his tricorder and did a scan. “There are fourteen lifeforms spread throughout five consecutive rooms nine point four meters north by northwest. The room directly to the left in the corridor up ahead is the first. The others follow to the left.”

“Anyone else in the compound?” Kirk asked.

Spock expanded his scan. “Negative. Nor in the rest of Hellguard. It appears our intelligence was accurate, Captain: the colony is abandoned.”

“Good. Let’s move,” he said, leading the way. “Phasers on stun,” he called over his shoulder, as a reminder. Hopefully they wouldn’t need them.

He paused outside the door. “Mr. Spock,” he said, “maybe they would be more responsive to a familiar face.”

“Captain, I can assure you that I have never met—“

“You know what I mean. A fellow Vulcan. Someone they can relate to.”

Spock nodded, instantly understanding. He pushed the door in and the first thing he noticed was the smell, the overpowering smell of death and infection.

A gasp and some scittering. The sound of rough fabric rubbing on dirty stone.

The room was lined with cages all around, holding people but more similar to a kennel than a prison nonetheless. Each cell was labeled scientifically, naming the trial number, age in days, and other particulars of the experiment. The bars of the cages were a metal Spock didn’t recognize, and the locks were magnetically sealed.

Kirk set to work hacking and overriding a control panel. His sheer speed and skill never ceased to surprise Spock, and within seconds the cage doors swung inward and a flickering old fluorescent flooded the room.

A child pointed at Spock and screamed.

He backed away from her cage quickly, hands up in what the humans had informed him was a gesture of peace. “There is no reason to be alarmed, I am—“

She was still screaming, not hearing a word he said, and though the doors, none of the other children moved towards them, all staying huddled back in corners, eyes wide and fear plain in their body language.

The security officers not so subtly shoved Spock out of the room.

Kirk crouched down at the doorway of the cage, making sure to turn off his phaser and hand it over to an officer. At his cue, the rest of the landing party also holstered their weapons.

“Hey,” he said, voice soft and gentle. “My name is Jim. I’m with Starfleet. We’re here to help you. Do you understand?”

The child stared at him for a moment, still wary, then nodded.

“That’s great.” He gave his best reassuring smile. “Do you wanna come out now? We aren’t gonna hurt you, I promise.”

There was a long pause where Kirk was sure the kid was going to say no and curl up even further. Then, to his delight, she gave a small nod and weakly struggled to get up.

Kirk entered the cage and scooped her up in his arms. She was light as a feather, just skin and bones under a mass of tangled hair. She leaned in to the warmth of his chest gratefully, and Jim’s heart clenched when he remembered how much warmer Vulcans needed to be than humans, and how even to him—even in just five minutes—the room felt cold.

The landing party set to work coaxing the remaining children out of their cells and beaming them up in groups, too many to do all at once. The kid in Jim’s arms was by far the youngest, the oldest appearing almost seventeen or eighteen.

Back on board the Enterprise, Jim was perfectly content to carry the little one to sickbay, but when he tried to set her down in a biobed, she whined and clutched at his shirt, nuzzling her head against him.

He chuckled. “Alright.” Still holding her, he swung around and sat himself in the biobed, pulling her into his lap so she could lean against him.

Bones was making the rounds quickly, barking gruff orders to his medical staff whenever it was possible to delegate. Today he needed all hands on deck, every doctor and nurse on board was on duty now no matter what shift they normally would have. The Gamma shift people kept yawning and guzzling coffee by the potful, and on the one hand that was massively unhealthy but on the other hand at least they weren’t fucking griping about it.

Sickbay was filled to the brim with people, doctors, nurses, everyone running around and bumping into him, bumping into each other. He couldn’t help bouncing on the heels of his feet, trying to relieve some of the anxiety. And still he was short-staffed. There weren’t enough physicians on board to deal with the sudden influx of _fourteen goddamn patients,_ and that’s on top of all the patients that were already in there due to space-related bullshit. In the past week, five ensigns had gotten mono from each other—thank god it wasn’t anything more serious—and another had managed to get pinkeye from a tribble.

And if one more person walked through that door, he was going to quit his job and fire himself into the sun.

He spotted Jim in one of his precious few biobeds with a grubby preschool-age kid asleep on his chest.

Bones was trying not to scream.

“Jim,” he said tightly, “now I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the entire purpose of having these specially-made biobeds is that they measure your fucking vitals. And right now that bed is supposed to be taking a reading on that little kid you got there, not your overgrown ass. Get up. There’s enough people milling around in here as is, you can come back once things have calmed down.”

“But Bones,” he said, laying on the puppy dog eyes, “she’s sleeping.”

“Jim,” he said firmly.

“This is probably the first time she’s been held in years.”

“Goddammit Jim. She needs a medical exam more than she needs a hug right now.” But Jim could see him softening slightly.

“Can’t you do that without the biobed? You have portable exam equipment for emergencies, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, lemme just break out the antiques so His Highness doesn’t have to get up.” He walked away, presumably to go do exactly that.

“Thank you!” Jim called after him. “Oh, and can you bring us a blanket? She’s cold.”

Bones paused, and he could tell the only thing keeping him from flipping him off was the presence of so many Vulcan children. Then he continued on, muttering to himself about the captain being an entitled sap.

The child curled in tighter against his chest, and he smiled, planting a kiss onto her hair.

* * *

 

“Well, she’s got pneumonia, that’s for sure. Or the Vulcan equivalent, at least. It’s lucky we got to them when we did,” Bones retracted the metal disk of the stethoscope, pulling the plugs out of his ears as well and letting it hang around his neck. Jim hid a grin at the image. He looked out of place in this century. All he needed now was one of those metal disk headband things and a hypo of penicillin, and he’d be ready for time travel. 

“Will she be okay?”

Bones resisted the urge to roll his eyes. As if he couldn’t handle a simple case of pneumonia, of all things. “Yeah, she’ll be fine, just gave her a hypo and I’ll check back up on her in twenty-four hours. It’s not the pneumonia I’m worried about. The kid’s midway through starvation and severely dehydrated. If she were a human, that would have killed her by now, but her physiology is adapted for long periods without water. In addition, she appears chronically undernourished. I’m not saying she was always this bad off, but I’m thinking the Romulans gave them just enough to keep ‘em alive.”

A stony cold anger cased itself over Jim’s heart. _Chronically undernourished._ He had a sickening familiarity with what that felt like. Only he had been much older, he hadn’t been fucking _four._ What sort of people were capable of doing that to someone so young? And then just abandoning them.

They could have at least unlocked the cages on their way out the door.

It was actually a shame that they hadn’t encountered anyone during their exfiltration mission. Jim would’ve loved to have punched at least one of these fuckers.

“Hey by the way, your first officer has been downright _lurking_ outside the sickbay since we got back and it’s starting to creep some of the personnel out. Myself included.”

“Alright, well tell him to come on in here. I need to discuss stuff with him anyway.”

Bones clicked his tongue. “Can’t. He refuses to enter the room. He’s afraid he’s gonna scare one of the kids again. The only way you two’ll be talking is if you come to him.”

Jim sighed. He should’ve figured Spock would react this way. Seeing a Vulcan have such a visceral emotional reaction had to be disturbing enough for him as is, but for Spock to know that he had caused it? He must’ve been freaked beyond belief.

Not that Vulcans got freaked.

The child woke up with the sound of voices and blinked slowly into awareness. She was small and scrawny, all of her joints knobby protrusions and her veins clearly visible under the thinner skin of her forehead and hands, reaching midway up her forearm even. Her hair was a gnarled mess of tangled curls heavy with dirt and grease. It was decorated with an impressive array of knots and split ends, and was a dulled rusty color that spoke of malnutrition. She wore a tattered hospital gown that was several sizes too small, as if she had been wearing it for years.

Even awake, she wasn’t exactly what Jim would call alert. Her struggle to stand up back in Hellguard made a lot more sense now. She barely had any muscle mass left. She probably needed to sleep for a solid month; Jim knows that’s the only thing _he_ had wanted to do.

“Hey. I have to go now,” he began to slowly extricate himself, careful not to dislodge any IVs or jostle her too harshly. She reached out towards him, making some indistinct pleading noise with a dry, scratchy voice incapable of any words. He winced when he realized how much her scream must have hurt.

“I know, I know, and I’m so sorry, but I have to work. I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”

She gave him a skeptical look that seemed too adult on someone so young and too emotional on a Vulcan. God. It would take a lot, he knew, to draw a look like that out.

He knew Vulcans hated physical touch and he wouldn’t want to cross any boundaries, but he also knew that she had already shown much more physical affection than was normal in her culture without a problem. And more than that, she was a little kid who had just been through a hell of an ordeal. She needed comfort.

He settled for giving her a pat on the shoulder before tearing himself away.

Spock was, in fact, lurking outside sickbay. He had his hands clasped behind his back and a thread of tension in his shoulders, subtle enough that it would be imperceptible to anyone who didn’t really know him. If he were human, he’d be pacing.

“How are the children?” he asked abruptly.

“Uh, I haven’t really been given an overview. That one kid I carried out seems to have gotten attached to me, so I’ve been sticking with her. She’s gonna be… Well it’s nothing life-threatening. Didn’t you already talk to Bones?”

“Yes. I wanted to hear your perspective on the matter as well, as I believe it will be far less ineloquent and littered with profanity, thus offering a clearer comprehension. Additionally, the doctor cannot be trusted to relay events accurately and without embellishment.”

Jim’s mind raced through processing that and lit on the most important phrase. He grinned. “You calling me eloquent, Spock?”

Spock gave him his condescending professorial look. _Don’t make me take it back,_ it said, clear as day. “Only moreso than Dr. McCoy.”

He laughed. “Well, you can find out for yourself how the kids are doing. Now that they’ve had a few hours to rest up, we should start taking statements from the ones who can give them.”

Spock hesitated, and Jim paused midway through the door when he sensed he wasn’t by his side. “Something wrong?”

“I request to be removed from this mission, Captain.”

He stepped back closer to him, allowing the door to slide shut. “Is this because that girl screamed at you?”

“I have deduced that such a reaction could only have been caused by my resemblance to their Romulan captors, given that they had no such trepidation towards human crew members and they have never met me personally before in order to form their own negative opinion. Therefore, my continued presence would only serve to cause the children further unnecessary distress. There are a number of other valuable pursuits that deserve my attention in the laboratories, and I believe it would be easy to find another suitable crewman to assist you.”

“Okay, first of all: no, it wouldn’t, you’re the best first officer in the ‘fleet, Spock, you can’t just be replaced,” he said. “Second of all: where do you think we’re taking these kids after this? Romulan space? They’re going straight to New Vulcan. They need to be able to look a Vulcan in the face without panicking. Hell, they need to be able to look at a mirror without panicking. Don’t know if you noticed, but you look exactly like them.”

Spock raised an eyebrow at that. He knew most humans didn’t immediately notice his mixed heritage. In fact, usually when he told someone, the fact was met with surprise. But to any Vulcan, his heritage was quite apparent. The physical differences were striking and obvious.

He definitely did not look ‘exactly’ like them.

Jim continued. “And that kid’s reaction was pure instinct anyway. She thought you were somebody you weren’t. Think about it: you’re trapped in a cage in the dark after being held captive by Romulans for who knows how long. You’ve finally accepted that they aren’t coming back, and then out of nowhere the lights flick on and in walks this Romulan-ass looking dude. Of course one of them screamed.”

Retelling it that way, he realizes sending Spock in first had not been his brightest idea.

“Anyway, my point is, she’s probably not actually scared of you. Or any of them, for that matter. What happened was entirely circumstantial. In new context, with you as the Starfleet officer who helped rescue them and keep them safe, they’re gonna love you.”

Spock still looked uncertain. Jim sighed. “Look, these kids are gonna have to learn to trust Vulcans. And I can’t think of anyone better to warm them up to the idea than you. I mean that.”

“The only other Vulcan you have met is my father. You are drawing your conclusions from insufficient data.” But apparently he saw the logic of Jim’s argument, because he moved alongside him and they entered sickbay in unison.


	2. Blackmail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Telan t'Kanlar = the bonding of children

McCoy had cleared all the children as medically okay enough to talk to, though he gave them both a stern warning to go easy on them. A stern warning more heavily directed at Spock.

None of the children were in any mortal peril. Eleven of them had pneumonia, one of them had a fracture in her arm that had never healed right, and all of them were dehydrated and starving, but they would be okay. Physically, at least. The ship’s counsellor hadn’t even started the evaluations.

They began with a scruffy kid between 13 and 15 who was in the biobed closest to the door and refused to relax. He hadn’t let his guard down since the landing party first found him, and he kept his eyes moving.

“Hi,” Jim said casually, sitting in a chair by the biobed, leaving several feet of space between him and the kid. “We didn’t get a chance to really introduce ourselves earlier. I’m Captain James Kirk. You can call me Jim.”

He offered the ta’al. The kid cocked his head quizzically. He didn’t return it.

And so began their process of interviews. There hadn’t been time to examine thoroughly the statements written on the cell doors due to the explicit danger of being in the Neutral Zone for _any_ length of time, but it soon became clear they should’ve at least snapped a picture or something. A lot of that info was vital and now seemingly lost forever.

They hadn’t even stuck around to clear out the bodies of those who hadn’t survived. A picture had been the last thing on anyone’s mind.

It became instantly obvious that these were not Vulcan children.

Not fully Vulcan, anyway. When asked how old they were, rather than giving an exact number of days, they gave a rough estimate of years. One simply shrugged. Hadn’t bothered to keep track.

They could not clearly recall the particulars of the experiments done on them. They knew that the researchers had been examining the line between Romulan and Vulcan, specifically in regard to their telepathic capabilities. Vulcans had them. Romulans didn’t. This was a disadvantage they wanted to know if they could remedy.

And there had been another motive in their experiments. The existence of the Vulcan mind meld is widely known. If someone could so completely enter another’s mind, then was it also possible for them to alter what they found there? To control what thoughts were in someone’s head?

Apparently the children had been given some of the Romulan Star Empire’s harshest criminals to test this on. An acceptable method of reeducation, they had called it.

They said they had been at the facility their entire lives.

“Likely conceived via genetic extrapolation,” Spock murmured, making a note down on his PADD.

“No,” one of the older ones corrected. “They needed a biological source. We had parents. Captured Vulcans.”

Kirk tried with all his might to telepathically will Spock to not say anything and then remembered that was an actual possibility and ran a finger along his wrist, careful to avoid his hands. He was respectful, after all. It was important to be aware of that sort of thing, since what was considered groping varied from culture to culture, and Starfleet’s sexual harassment regs were very clear on that.

And Spock was blessedly, tactfully, silent.

They had not found any adults, alive or dead, at the colony. It was likely there were none to find. Their report really didn’t need to be any more specific than that.

The children’s telepathy was like nothing Spock had ever seen before, an oddity he should have noticed the second he encountered them. They generated a great deal of telepathic noise, and with absolutely no shielding. They were untrained. They heard every thought around them with no ability to block it out, and no ability to block others from hearing theirs. What one felt, they all felt, and what one thought, they all heard.

He only lowered his shields briefly to assess their abilities. He didn’t desire to invade anyone’s privacy.

They were all raw power with no mastery. The Romulans hadn’t been able to teach them anything. And, for whatever reason, neither had their Vulcan parents.

Their abilities weren’t as strong as a full-blooded Vulcan’s or one with training would be. That was fortunate. They might not have survived if they had all been able to feel each other’s suffering as acutely as they felt their own. Their own pain, magnified fourteen times in an infinite mirror of projection, compounding and compounding and compounding on itself. 

Shielding is, at its core, a defense mechanism.

* * *

 

“Uhura, send a message to the Vulcan High Council. Official business, priority two, classified,” Kirk said from the captain’s chair.

Within seconds, the viewscreen changed to show the face of one of the elders. The rest of the council sat at a circular table behind her. Both she and Jim gave the ta’al.

“Councilor. Starfleet is honored with your presence. We have recently completed a covert mission operated within the Romulan Neutral Zone. The admiralty should have contacted you about it.”

“The Council is aware of the details of this mission,” she said crisply. Kirk knew better than to read anything into that. A Vulcan sounding cold was no cause to worry.

“We have fourteen survivors ready to transport to New Vulcan at your discretion. All of them are minors and will need to be placed with foster families. We would be happy to defer to your expertise about the particulars.”

“There have been rumors that the survivors are half-blooded Romulans. Can you confirm or deny this?”

 _That_ was a cause to worry.

“Yes. It is true,” he admitted.

“Then we will not be placing them in foster care on New Vulcan. As I’m sure you can understand, Captain Kirk, our resources here are very limited. We prefer to dispense them to our own people.”

He felt rage spike in his blood and tried to tamp it down as much as he could. He could be diplomatic about this. Within seconds, this had gone from mission update to negotiation. “With all due respect, Councilor, the survivors are half Vulcan. By blood, they are your people. And they’ve just been through a very traumatic experience, I’m sure the last thing they need right now is to be denied access to the only home they have.”

“Having partial Vulcan blood is not the same as having Vulcan citizenship. These people have never set foot on the homeworld or the new colony. They do not know our culture or our customs. They do not share our values. They are Romulans raised by Romulans and kidnapped out of the Neutral Zone. Frankly, Captain, the Council has expressed concern that these test subjects might be bait. Their rescue went suspiciously well. They would make ideal spies or scouts to send in before an attack.”

 _“Spies?!_ They’re _kids!_ You get that the people we’re talking about here are kids, right?”

The elder’s left eye twitched slightly. “Their status as minors is irrelevant.”

“Well what do you propose we do with them then? Take them back to Hellguard and leave them for dead? Cross the Neutral Zone and drop them straight in the center of Romulus? They aren’t Romulans! They’ve already been kicked to the curb by those people, they have nowhere else to go.”

“I am sure a suitable living arrangement could be found on any number of Federation planets that are under significantly less strain than we are.”

“Listen, they don’t need much. Just food and a place to stay. They won’t be that much of a strain on your resources. Giving shelter to fourteen desperate kids is not the end of the world here.” He was pleading now.

“You’re right, Captain. The end of the world has already come and gone, and now we are trying to recover. You will forgive us for exercising caution. Live long and prosper.” The words were snarled out with acid in them.

The transmission cut out.

Kirk seethed in his seat. “Commander Spock, meet me in briefing room five.” He stormed to the turbolift, and Spock hurried after him, everyone on the bridge watching in wide-eyed silence. Kirk addressing any one of them by their full name and rank was about on par with Spock familiarly using a nickname.

Kirk turned on him the second the briefing room door closed. “Is there any way we can fight this?”

Spock shook his head. “Negative. The Council’s word is binding. They are the highest authority that can be appealed to on the planet.”

“What about off the planet?”

“You could bring the matter before the Federation leaders. There is an 82.53% chance of it becoming a diplomatic incident at that point. In such an instance, the Federation is highly likely to defer to the Vulcan High Council in order to reassure them of their galactic status and authority despite newly limited numbers. This show of indulgence would be politically beneficial to all parties involved, but come as a detriment to the children.”

Kirk pulled out a chair at the conference table and folded into it, rubbing his forehead. “Do they _need_ Vulcan citizenship? Can they get by without it?”

“Without citizenship, they will not be placed in the Vulcan foster care system or educational system. They will have no home among their people and will have to live off-world, disconnected from them. They will not be placed among their ancestors in the katric ark when they die. They will be excluded from a number of rites that are necessary to complete in order to live a full life as a Vulcan adult.”

Jim exhaled loudly. “Shit.”

Even just one of those things was enough to screw those kids over, but all of them? They were doomed.

“How can you get Vulcan citizenship if you weren’t born with it?” he asked.

Spock paused, just barely. “There have been very few who have ever been granted that privilege. It is most commonly acquired through bonding with a Vulcan citizen. As far as I know, all other cases were extremely rare and special circumstances. I admit I do not know much about the process.”

“Shit. Sorry. I’ve been asking you all this stuff, expecting you to be some sorta expert on all things Vulcan, and that isn’t fair,” he said.

“Your apology is unnecessary. Much of the information I have given you could not be found through traditional research means and would have required you to ask me anyway. Additionally,” a hint of some unidentifiable emotion played across his face, “I would like to help the children in whatever way I can.”

Kirk nodded. Frankly, he expected as much. Spock was loyal almost to a fault, and Jim may not know much about his childhood, but if the way the elders talked about ‘half-bloods’ was any indication, he didn’t need to. This mission was very rapidly getting very personal for both of them.

When he had realized that the man he would be working most closely with for the next five years was Vulcan, he had decided to read up on their culture to prevent any misunderstandings. There wasn’t much to read, but a lot of what he did find described them as a proud and ancient race. It seemed obvious now that “proud and ancient race” was the diplomatically-approved, Federation-polite way of saying Earth’s biggest ally was ethnocentrist as fuck.

Former biggest ally.

He wondered how he hadn’t picked up on that earlier; he was usually pretty good at seeing through bullshit. Hell, he had just assumed Vulcans were too logical for that sort of thing.

He thought of the little girl down in sickbay, half-Romulan and trying to fit in among people whose whole world had been destroyed by a Romulan. It wasn’t going to be easy.

If she was even given a chance in the first place.

“It’s a shame we can’t just… blackmail them into it, ya know?” he laughed hollowly.

Spock said nothing. Kirk sighed and rested his head on his folded arms. He needed a nap. He needed to go to sleep and wake up in a universe where traumatized kids were met with open arms and offers of help, not— _this._

“We could,” Spock said.

“What?” He lifted his head up.

“We could blackmail them,” he said. Maybe Jim couldn’t read him as well as he thought, because he seemed dead serious.

“You know, for the first joke you’ve ever told, it’s not very funny. I feel like you wasted the occasion. Shoulda waited ‘til you had a really good one to tell,” he said flatly, cautiously.

“I am not joking. I have knowledge of matters that are held secret by all Vulcans. It is… our deepest shame. It is not something outworlders can ever have knowledge of,” he said. His heart was pounding in his side and he felt shaky and surreal. He couldn’t believe he was suggesting this. “If I were to… threaten to make this knowledge public…”

“Oh my god,” Jim said, understanding dawning. “You would do that? You would expose some—some planetwide secret… You sure you wanna go through with this, Spock? These are your people we’re talking about.”

“I estimate there is extremely little chance of the Council not ceding to our demands immediately. In the event that they do not, however, I will do what is necessary. There is no point in empty threats,” he said.

“Damn. Okay. As long as you’re sure.” He pulled up the Council again on the briefing room’s secure channel.

He couldn’t believe Spock was willing to do this. He knew Vulcans were intensely private and secretive about a lot of things, stuff that most other species considered standard. Anything in-depth about their culture had to be found out from firsthand experiences or guesswork. Their history was ominous because no one had any clue what the hell they were doing before the Reform, only that it had apparently been bad enough that eventually they reached a breaking point that resulted in the entire species collectively agreeing to repress all of their emotions for the rest of eternity. And Starfleet Academy can’t even teach Vulcan biology. There’s a campus conspiracy theory that says it’s because the High Council forbid it, not just lack of information.

Bones had nearly had a heart attack the first time he gave Spock an exam and he couldn’t find his heart. It didn’t help that the readings were spiked into what would be extremes for a human. He had thought the guy was dying.

He had to wonder what could possibly be their ‘deepest shame,’ as Spock put it. Probably something dark from before the Reform. Maybe they’d had an evil dictator or something. That was something to be ashamed about, though not particularly uncommon.

The Councilor’s face greeted them on the viewscreen. She gave the ta’al quickly and moved on. “Captain, I realize that human memory is substandard compared to that of Vulcans, but I assure you the High Council’s decision has not changed in the past 12.64 minutes.”

“Yeah? Why don’t you give it another 12.64 minutes and see how you feel about it then?” He was loving this. “Take it away, Spock.”

He moved to step out of the way and give Spock some room, but two fingers came up and pinched his sleeve, holding him in place. Weird, but he didn’t protest.

“I demand that you grant the survivors their rightful Vulcan citizenship,” Spock said.

The elder’s eyes narrowed. “You are in no position to make such a demand. Explain yourself.”

“I intend to blackmail the High Council,” he said plainly.

He was pretty sure his hands were shaking, so he clasped them behind his back. He surreptitiously took his pulse in the process. Elevated.

He could not afford to be feeling an emotion at this point in time.

“What information do you have that you believe would to be so valuable to us?” The elder was unflinching, her eyes hard.

“Pon farr,” he said. “Do not believe I would hesitate to tell outworlders of its true nature. I am capable of and willing to attract a significant amount of media attention. I surmise that the rest of the galaxy would be keenly interested in a phenomenon such as pon farr. Vulcans, in a time of great vulnerability, stripped of all logic—“

“That’s enough!” the councilor bit, her voice rising to a volume above what was strictly necessary. Her eyes flashed towards Jim. He was paying rapt attention. The human was even more expressive than most of his species, and his face held ravenous curiosity.

He was perfect.

He drank in the elder’s reaction and a smirk played across his lips. Spock saw the exact moment he realized why he had been kept in view.

The elder typed at controls out of their sight and the viewscreen switched to show the circular table the rest of the High Council was at. The councilors looked up from their separate work, the elder who had been speaking with them hurrying over and taking her seat.

“The son of Sarek is threatening to disclose the nature of pon farr to the media unless we grant citizenship to the Romulan half-breeds he captured,” she hissed in explanation. There was no emotional intonation, of course. But there didn’t need to be.

The High Council stilled. All other work was discarded almost subconsciously. Eight pairs of eyes focused intently on the small viewscreen, fathomless and yet giving nothing away.

“Commander Spock,” one of them said. “This is an illogical course of action. You are Vulcan. The shame of pon farr is your shame too.”

“Due to my hybrid nature and my relative youth, it is not yet certain whether or not pon farr will affect me. Even if it does, I have no shame in doing what is necessary. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

“You have acted foolishly, son of Sarek. One cannot expect to blackmail the High Council with impunity. When you arrive on New Vulcan, you will be tried to the fullest extent of the law.”

Spock nodded. “Of course. I would inevitably lose such a trial. Following that, I would have no other recourse than to appeal to the Supreme Court of the Federation. No doubt the case would be highly publicized. I would be legally required to explain the situation in full, and I’m sure the press would have many questions for me as well.”

A moment of speechlessness stretched as the threat sank in. Jim swore he could see wheels turning in the councilors’ heads as they tried to logic their way out of this one.

“The children will be given Vulcan citizenship. They will be barred from no facilities nor opportunities and will have the same rights as those born on the homeworld. They will be suitably placed into the foster and educational systems. All Vulcan rituals will be open for them to complete, including Telan t'Kanlar,” he continued. “I will be checking in with the children regularly to ensure these demands are being met.”

“This is unexpected of you, commander,” one of the elders said. “We were well aware that Ambassador Sarek’s half-human son had fled Vulcan to be among his own people, but it was unanticipated that even a half-breed would be so traitorous.”

“Wow, fuck you,” Jim said, a smile on his face, but it was mirthless, aggressive, more a baring of teeth than anything else. He had told himself that this was Spock’s thing and he was going to let Spock handle it, but you know what, he had to draw the line somewhere. He couldn’t just _not_ say anything.

And he wasn’t done. “You know what, fuck all of you. You’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites, the whole lot of you. Isn’t the core of Vulcan philosophy ‘infinite diversity in infinite combinations’? Whatever happened to that? Is it just something you say to make yourselves seem all nice and open-minded but in reality you shit all over anyone who’s even slightly different? What the fuck is wrong with you people?! So Spock’s half-human, so what? He’s the best first officer a captain could ask for and you _wish_ you had a mind like his back on the colony instead of out here with all us humans. You’re missing out.”

The High Council did not react in the slightest. “Are you finished with your emotional display, captain?” one of the elders asked dryly.

Jim scowled at her.

“The record of this conversation would be quite incriminating if reviewed by anyone at Starfleet,” Spock cut in hesitantly. “Such an occurrence would be undesirable for all parties involved. However, it would raise suspicions if the record were to be erased from our end. I propose that the High Council experience a technical error following the termination of this transmission that results in its accidental erasure.”

“The matter will be handled sufficiently,” an elder said. “Is that all, son of Sarek?”

“Affirmative.” The transmission cut out before the word was fully out of his mouth.

Jim whistled. “That was intense.”

“I find myself in a state of agreement.”

“Okay, so you have to tell me what that whole pon farr thing was about.”

Spock’s eyes widened then narrowed minusculely. “That statement is factually untrue. There is no objective reason why I should ‘have to’ inform you of its nature.”

“I mean, true, but c’mon Spock. I was your accomplice in this. We just blackmailed literal world leaders. I risked everything on the worth of this information, I at least deserve to know what it was.”

“Whether or not you deserve to know is irrelevant. Pon farr is a matter of grave secrecy for all Vulcans, and I will not disclose it needlessly to sate your idle curiosity.”

“You _can_ trust me, you know. I know how to keep a secret. Starfleet trusts me with more classified information than anyone else on this ship, even you, Spock,” he said. “I _promise_ I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Assurances of your confidance will have no effect on my decision. No outworlder may know of pon farr,” he said.

“I’m sure _some_ outworlders know about it. I mean, your mom married a Vulcan and lived on the planet for decades. Did she know about pon farr?”

Spock was horribly, thoroughly appalled. He felt heat creep up on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. “I suppose,” he said. It was not something he wanted to contemplate. “I no longer wish to continue this conversation.”

He was gone before Jim could react, long strides carrying him away within seconds.


	3. Definitions

Jim definitely wasn’t letting the pon farr thing go. He had finally found a topic scandalous enough to make a Vulcan _blush_ , and that was a hell of a sight. He liked to imagine that he was one of a privileged few to have ever seen such a thing. Best case scenario, it was something he hoped to repeat very soon and very often. There was no sweeter victory than knowing he was able to slip under years of carefully-kept control and provoke something, awaken something long since buried by all the conditioning.

Unfortunately, his research didn’t yield much. There was nothing in Starfleet’s data banks about pon farr. He tried a bunch of different spellings, figuring he was probably getting it wrong.

Pone far. Poan fahr. Pown faar. Pon farr.

Nothing.

He considered going to Uhura for help, but how was he going to convince Spock to open up about it if he couldn’t even be trusted to keep his mouth shut? He ended up just borrowing a book on Vulcan phonetics from her, which made her suspicious, but he refused to explain.

There was not one single mention of it—whatever it was—in any text or data sample known to the Federation. The only thing he couldn’t check were classified documents above his clearance level, and he figured those weren’t worth the threat of getting court martialed to hack.

The only way he was going to find out the truth was if Spock told him (unlikely) or he pieced it together himself (slightly less unlikely).

He reviewed all the information he had garnered on it. He knew that it was something that affected all Vulcans apparently, but maybe not Spock, because he was half-human. And young. That seemed to imply that it was biological.

Spock had described it as a time in which Vulcans were “vulnerable and stripped of all logic,” so that loaned to the idea that it had severe mental affects. And he had also said it was his people’s deepest shame. Hell, he didn’t need to say that; whatever it was was so bad the High Council would allow themselves to be manipulated in order to keep it quiet.

And what’s the most shameful thing in the world to Vulcans? Illogicality. Senselessness. Emotionalism.

Maybe once every fifty years all that repression finally took its toll and they snapped in a hormone-fueled emotional frenzy for a while.

Uh-huh. Sounds likely. Secretly the entire planet has actually been able to feel things this entire time. And Jim was an Rigellian slimeworm.

It had to be simpler than that. Baser. Vulcans wouldn’t want to admit that they were prone to the same biological weaknesses as every other species in the galaxy. No, they had to constantly make sure everyone was aware of their own superiority.

Maybe pon farr was literally just the Vulcan word for sex. That was a pretty strong taboo there, right?

Or violence, maybe. A race of pacifists, planet of the vegetarians, who were touch telepaths on top of it all. Had to make throwing a punch hella awkward when you knew exactly how it made your opponent feel. There’s your guilt complex right there. He imagined their society didn’t look kindly on anyone who fell prey to such illogical urges.

Maybe that was it. Maybe Jim was thinking too narrowly and it was exactly what Spock said it was: Vulcans stripped of all logic. There had to be some, right? Surely there was at least a couple people on the entire planet who didn’t fit the ideal? Maybe pon farr was a Vulcan who embraced emotion rather than being repulsed by it.

That would be a big cultural shame. That would be anathema in Vulcan society, a complete rejection of all their philosophy and culture, of everything they had become since the Reform.

And just as he was starting to warm up to his theory he remembered that it was something that affected _all_ Vulcans.

Maybe it was their word for emotion. For those urges and feelings they all swore they didn’t have. Maybe it actually took them effort to repress that, and acknowledging that the feelings were still there, still real and still possible, was their greatest taboo.

Except pon farr might not affect Spock and he’s half human and definitely capable of feeling things, Jim isn’t gonna fall for that one. The Council didn’t strike him as the type to imply that his half-human heritage made him _more_ likely to adhere to the tenets of Vulcan philosophy. So that was out.

And so, reluctantly, he was forced to abandon his search. For now.

The children required a lot of his attention anyway. Bones gave him a very thorough debriefing in what to expect from the kids. Extremely stunted communication skills. Inability to read implicit social cues, especially when words said one thing and tone said another. Lack of understanding of social complexities. Deep-seated mistrust of others, but at the same time, they might be overly familiar with anyone they have gotten to know even slightly. Heightened risk of developing depression, chronic anxiety, or PTSD.

“And that’s just the standard stuff for any children raised in captivity and damn near isolation. They’ll prolly have other problems on top of that, but I can’t predict ‘em, ‘cause I don’t know what the hell the Romulans were doing to them.”

Jim made sure to keep that in mind when he visited sickbay. He was going to be as nonthreatening as possible. He wasn’t going to use that stupid grownup voice that was supposed to be soothing but was really just condescending. He wasn’t going to ask any of them how they felt because the answer was crappy and scared. And he definitely wasn’t going to try and force any of them to talk about it.

He still didn’t get why people did that. Things happened. They sucked. Talking about it was about the least fun thing ever, and he doesn’t see how that supposedly helps anyone ‘move on.’ Seems pretty counterintuitive to him.

The second he walked into sickbay, dark eyes fixed on him intently and refused to budge. He felt the familiar, hawk-like Vulcan intensity focus on him like he was a sample under a microscope.

Not one to ignore the obvious, he followed the pull of that gaze and made his way over to the little girl.

“Hello again,” he said. “Told you I’d be back. Scoot over.”

She obliged, making room for him on the biobed. As soon as he settled in, she cuddled up against him, stick-like arms wrapping around his side.

“So we’re heading to New Vulcan now,” he said, because he had to talk about something. “That’s where most of your species lives. Other people like you. They’re going to help you, take care of you and make sure you learn stuff. Give you plenty of food and a warm bed, all that jazz. Family stuff. Hopefully someone there is going to adopt you.”

“Adopt?”

“Yeah. It means when a family takes someone they aren’t related to and makes them one of their own. You’ll have parents, soon. Probably some siblings too.”

She frowned, considering that. “Hey,” Jim said, tilting her chin up to look at him. “Don’t worry. They’re gonna love you. And you’re gonna love them. You just have to give them a chance, but I promise, it’s all gonna work out in the end.”

“Are you going to be there?”

“Um,” he faltered. “No. No, I have to stay with the ship.” Seeing her expression, he hastened to add, “I mean, I’ll be there at first. To get you settled and make sure you’ve got a good family. I’m not just gonna abandon you alone on some planet. But I can’t stay there forever.”

The child pressed herself more firmly into Jim’s side, as if trying to make sure he didn’t leave. “But I don’t want you to go. Can’t I stay here instead?”

He laughed a bit, because that was sweet but she didn’t know what she was saying. “Don’t you wanna be with your own people, sweetheart? And besides, you don’t wanna live on a starship. It’s just a bunch of stuffy adults doing science. And it’s dangerous sometimes, too. You wanna stay away from that.”

“I can handle dangerous,” she said determinedly, jutting her chin out.

He smiled. “Of course you can. I’m definitely not doubting that. But don’t you wanna meet some other kids your own age, make some friends?”

She didn’t answer that, instead picking at a string on her ratty surgical gown. Some of the other kids had been given clean, sickbay-issued gowns to change into, but they didn’t keep supplies her size readily on hand. Jim would have to look into it.

“Hey. Could you tell me what your name is?” He nudged her gently.

“Subject 528. Saavik.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the string she was playing with.

Jim blinked, recognizing that as a masculine name. Vulcan culture had the strictest gender rules when it came to names of any species in the galaxy. That was probably a very logical, efficient way of declaring someone’s gender without any awkward mistakes.

And yet, Jim had still managed to make an awkward mistake. He guiltily realized he had been mentally misgendering Saavik this entire time. In his defense, all kids were pretty much functionally androgynous until puberty, and Saavik had long hair, a dress-ish garment on, and the high-pitched voice of a child. Still, he had assumed, and he had assumed wrong.

But maybe it didn’t mean as much as Jim thought it did. There was no way of knowing whether Saavik had been named by her—his—Romulan captors or his Vulcan parent. Maybe that was a Romulan name and their customs had diverged in that respect and gender wasn’t a hard and fast rule with Romulan names. Maybe Saavik had never even met their Vulcan parent and Jim was being a total dumbass about this.

Though from what the debriefing had revealed, it sounded like all the survivors used Vulcan names. Either that or Romulan names were just scarily similar and hadn’t changed in centuries. But every survivor so far had addressed themselves by a subject number and the standard S-something or T’whatever name formula. Except for the oldest girl, who only gave a subject number and looked as unemotive as any other Vulcan, but somehow it felt different on her. More exhausted. Less purposeful.

“Well that’s cool. So how old are you, Saavik?”

“Seventeen moons.”

Jim did quick math, converting the length of the Romulan lunar cycle into Terran days, then months, then years. Just barely six. His jaw twitched when he realized this small pile of bones and dirt was supposed to be a fully grown six-year-old. He had been short and scrawny after Tarsus, but damn if he had ever been _that_ underdeveloped.

He was trying to think of some way to explain why going to New Vulcan was a good thing when Bones appeared, glowering even moreso than usual.

“Jim,” he said tightly, “if you’d see me in my office. Please.”

He shot his friend an inquisitive look and clamored out of the biobed. Somehow, he felt like a little kid in trouble, and that didn’t make any sense whatsoever because he was a grown ass man and also Bones’ boss. Technically.

“Just what in the sam hill do you think you’re doing?!” Bones asked the second the door closed.

“Talking to a kid? Like I said I would?”

“Jim, I think that little girl’s imprinted on you.”

He almost laughed. “What, like a duckling?”

“Yes. Exactly like a duckling. Except a duckling that already has trust issues and who you are going to have to _abandon_ in ten days. You fussin’ all around her and letting her get attached is the last thing that poor kid needs.”

“So what was I supposed to do, Bones? Completely ignore the kid? Leave him completely alone after everything he’s just been through?”

“Him?”

Jim shrugged.

Bones shook his head. “Look, that doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done. At this point I just don’t want you to screw anything up even worse than it already is. Getting these kids adopted is a good thing. They deserve to be happy when they arrive on the colony. I want that kid to be able to leave you behind without any waterworks and go on to live a logical, unemotional life.”

Jim worried his bottom lip between his teeth and paced the length of the office. “Do you think they’ll be okay on New Vulcan?” Spock seemed to think it was necessary to their wellbeing, but Spock wasn’t always right, despite what he thought. And Jim trusted him—he did, really—but he’d trust him a little bit more if he had the full story.

“As okay as anybody livin’ on that devil’s backside of a desert world can be. Whaddaya mean?”

He collapsed into a chair with a sigh. “We had to contact the High Council and ask about arrangements, right? Only they threw this huge fit about not wanting the kids there. They even tried to deny them citizenship, so Spock and I had to… um, talk them into it.”

Bones’ eyes narrowed.

“And Spock’s never said anything before but the way those people were talking about ‘half-breeds’…” He exhaled. “And those are the most respected people on the planet. I just… I’m just worried about how they’re going to be treated once they get there. The last thing these kids need is more trouble, ya know?”

“Damn,” he said. “Wouldn’t’a thought Vulcans’d be like that.”

The silence stretched between them. Under normal circumstances, this would’ve been when drinks were poured, but Jim had beta later and Bones was intent on working himself to death until the kids left.

“They need emotional support,” Bones said slowly. “I know Vulcans don’t do that sorta thing, but these kids… They aren’t your typical Vulcans. They need more than bein’ told to suck it up and not feel anything. That shit ain’t healthy.”

“Probably shouldn’t pass judgment on other cultures.”

“I’m not passing judgment. That’s my professional, medical opinion.”

“Screw it. I’ll switch myself to gamma and work beta tomorrow. Where’s your bourbon?”

He jumped up and began rifling through Bones’ cabinets, pulling out two glasses and a bottle. He poured himself a glass, and Bones waved him off before he could pour a second.

Jim swallowed the drink quickly, letting it burn his throat on the way down, and then poured himself another.

“D’you think it’s the right thing to do? Taking them to New Vulcan?” he asked. “We coulda dropped them on any Federation planet we wanted. The Council all but begged us to. But Spock made it seem like it was this huge deal, like them not getting citizenship was the worst thing ever, and yeah that was a really shitty move of them, but what if they really would be better off elsewhere?”

“That was your first mistake,” Bones said. “Listening to Spock. Man could logic you into believin’ the sky was purple.”

“They seemed like really good points at the time,” Jim said miserably. “Like it would ruin their lives or something.”

“Maybe it would,” Bones conceded. “You can’t predict the future, Jim. These kids are gonna stick out like a sore thumb no matter where they go. Maybe the colony’ll be the best thing for them. They’ll blend in physically, and they can repress everything to their heart’s content. They’ll be happy as a clam. Or as close as a Vulcan can get to that, anyway.”

“They’re only half Vulcan, Bones.”

“So? So’s Spock, and he manages just fine.”

His words were eerily similar to what Jim had said to the High Council, and he revolted at the thought. He did not need to be reasoned with in the same way that those people did. And if he did, then he needed to fix something.

“Maybe you’re right. I mean, an entire planet has been living that way for centuries, and they haven’t devolved into chaos yet, so obviously it works.” It was their way of life. And maybe he didn’t understand it, and maybe it seemed weird and almost wrong to his human sensibilities, but he could at least respect it. Humans and Vulcans were not the same species, and what a human kid needed was not what a Vulcan kid needed, or would even appreciate.

He could suck it up and let the kids go.


	4. Shielding lessons

The crew was in a frenzy trying to make the kids as adoptable as possible before they reached New Vulcan. But they certainly had their work cut out for them.

The biggest problem was that the kids only spoke Romulan. Uhura was trying to teach them Vulcan as fast as she could, which was going fairly well. Vulcan was pretty easy to learn. It’s a very logically constructed language, for the most part, even if the spelling made Jim want to cry.

Uhura asked any crew members who could to speak to them in Vulcan rather than letting the universal translator scramble their Federation Standard into Romulan. They could learn Standard later, they would have plenty of chances to on New Vulcan. Almost everyone there spoke it as a second language.

The kids didn’t even speak Romulan all that well. Their vocabularies were about as extensive as that of an average human second grader’s, but it was full of words like ‘gene splicing’ and ‘electroshock.’

The children rarely ‘spoke’ either way. They preferred to communicate with each other telepathically. Why bother talking when you can all read each other’s thoughts and sense each other’s feelings?

And that had been the deciding push that shoved Spock into teaching a class that gave a rough overview of Vulcan culture and managing their telepathy. He gave it some long and painfully accurate title that nobody actually remembered, and the entire crew was all too happy to refer to it as Spock’s How-To-Be-A-Vulcan crash course.

He walked into the disused conference room that he had appropriated as a makeshift classroom. The children filled every seat at the table, with four extras dragged in. They were still, quiet, watching him with wide eyes and ramrod posture.

He nodded to acknowledge their presence and walked to the head of the table. “You may address me as Talsu Spock.”

The children did not respond.

“I will be instructing you in managing your telepathy and the basics of Vulcan culture. Today we will address the matter of shielding.”

He found that his heightened hearing combined with the stillness of the room allowed him to hear his own heartbeat.

“Shielding is a method of erecting a telepathic block between yourself and others. It is expected as a social courtesy on Vulcan. Most children learn to maintain a basic shield somewhere between ages five and eight.”

“Is that why we can’t hear your thoughts?” the scruffy fifteen-year-old, Sgon, asked.

“Affirmative.”

The children reacted visibly to this, their gazes sharpening even further, some straightening or stiffening in their chairs.

“The simplest shield will block others from reading your thoughts. As you grow more skilled at constructing them, you will also be able to prevent yourself from hearing the thoughts of others. And their emotions. This will aid greatly in your ability to focus, and to achieve a meditative state.”

He went on to explain to the children, quite thoroughly, how to construct a shield. Many of them struggled with it, but that was to be expected. It is not a skill typically learned over the course of one day.

Each child required additional, one-on-one instruction through a mind meld to learn how to get it just right. That would be necessary every time they constructed their shields at first. Eventually, they would be able to maintain them on their own for longer periods of time, reaching a twenty-four hour period of time and then beyond, to the point where they did not require daily instruction. They would grow more skilled at raising their shields on their own, and would eventually be able to maintain them indefinitely with ease.

It was not dissimilar to how Terran children were taught to ride a bike, as Spock understood it. At first, they started out with basics and required constant supervision. But as they progressed, that guiding hand would be there less and less, until they were able to perform completely independent of it.

He sat cross-legged on a meditation mat across from T’Frav, a twelve-year-old who twitched and jumped at every sound, constantly drumming her fingers and tapping her foot, eyes perpetually wide.

She was having significantly more trouble than most.

“Close your eyes,” Spock said. “Begin the breathing pattern. Clear your head of all thoughts. Concentrate on the sound of my voice. I am going to initiate a meld now.”

He raised his fingertips to her meld points, moving on instinct, eyes closed. He had had to lower his shields for this exercise. It allowed for a greater telepathic awareness that precluded the need for sight.

Their minds touched, mingled, overlapped and became one. It was the mental equivalent of plunging into a pool of ice water. Her thoughts were frantic and laced with fear in every word, every sense, every action, constantly hyper-alert and hypervigilant.

Spock braced and forced himself not to withdraw. Her terror washed over his mind, soaked through every neuron, and he let it happen. He was panicking. He was panicking but he was in control. He had training and she did not.

He sent some of his calm over to her, along with a string of mental reassurances.

He began constructing a shield around them, slowly, giving her time to observe the process. The fear was less potent now, and her focus zeroed in on the lesson. She was an apt pupil, catching on to new concepts quickly.

She contributed her efforts towards raising the shields, and outside world began to close itself off. Runover thoughts and feelings murmured and grew softer, slower, silent. Numb. The lack of sensation was, in itself, a new sensation. The only presence left was that of her own and Spock’s.

It was so, so  _quiet._

Spock began to withdraw, leaving her totally alone in her own head for the first time in her life.

T’Frav panicked. Fear spiked aggressively through the residual meld, shoving past the boundaries of her own shields and reaching out.

A pulse of psychic energy rippled out from her, dousing everyone within a half a kilometer radius.

* * *

 

“What the  _fuck_  was that?!” Kirk looked around the bridge frantically. To be honest, he wasn’t sure who had spoken. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was Uhura.

“You all felt that, right?” he asked. The bridge crew gave shaky nods. Chekov looked paralyzed in his seat, gripping the edge of the console with white knuckles. The two security ensigns holstered their phasers, having drawn them instinctively.

“The Vulcans,” Uhura said, piecing it together before anyone else had even recovered.

“Comm Spock,” he said. She nodded, pulling up the intercom to his ‘classroom.’

“Mr. Spock. Meet me in briefing room three. On the double,” he said tersely, already heading for the turbolift.

He stalked the meeting room anxiously until the science officer arrived.

“What the hell was that, Spock?! I’m pretty sure the whole ship felt it!”

“T’Frav experienced a panic attack while in a mind meld.” He clasped his hands behind his back.

“Yeah? Why did we all get to  _experience_ it with her?”

“Captain, I guarantee you the entire ship did not experience a panic attack. That is a gross exaggeration of what has occurred.”

Kirk held up one finger and walked over to the intercom. “Bridge, status report.”

“Three crewmen are currently in sickbay for panic attacks, sir. All sections report a sense of heightened anxiety at 1650. Ship’s systems were unaffected and remain stable,” came Uhura’s voice through the line.

“Thank you, Uhura,” he smirked.

“Three crewmen out of 430 is less than 0.007% of the personnel and hardly constitutes the entire crew.”

“Yeah, but we all  _felt_  it. Maybe not everyone at the same strength, but it affected all of us,” he perched on the edge of the table. “So explain. What happened?”

“In order to fully demonstrate how to erect mental shields, I initiated a mind meld with T’Frav. The loss of the familiar sensation of the minds around her induced a panic attack as I was withdrawing from the meld. Her mind sought out the presence of others for comfort and toppled the shields quite forcefully. What you felt as a psychic pulse was her mind’s attempt to contact all within reach for reassurance.”

“Is T’Frav okay?”

“In the immediate sense, yes. I believe she would benefit greatly from regular appointments with a mind healer in order to alleviate her anxiety, and from learning meditative practices to aid in emotional control. Such things involve a great investment of time, however, and cannot be undertaken until our arrival on the colony.”

That was a relief to hear, for multiple reasons. Jim had honestly been expecting the worst of Vulcan mental healthcare, mostly because he couldn’t even imagine explaining something like an anxiety disorder to a Vulcan.  _Hey yeah, not only am I feeling this emotion, fear, but it’s really strong and completely irrational and no, I can’t just make it go away._  He couldn’t even imagine that being a problem that Vulcans would admit to having.

But mind healers. They went to mind healers more often than they went to actual physical doctors. Apparently Vulcans lumped all head issues into the same overarching category, and thank God for that. No one was going to give the kids any flak for needing to see a mind healer. Maybe they didn’t have therapy in the way that humans understood it, but there was a system in place. The kids weren’t going to be left in the lurch.

That new context made his decision a lot easier to live with. He wasn’t sending them off to be completely alone without any help. And maybe all that Vulcan meditation and emotional control stuff could actually be helpful instead of harmful. If it wasn’t straight-out repression, then maybe it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

It could even be healthy, maybe.

“Okay,” Kirk rubbed a hand across his brow. “Okay. So this was just some weird fluke. This isn’t how shielding lessons normally go.”

“Affirmative. Such an occurrence is highly irregular. It will not happen again.”

* * *

 

It happened again, precisely 40.83 minutes after Spock said it wouldn’t.

Stolek became frustrated at his inability to understand the concept, much less employ it. Spock had been midway through raising his shields for him, trying to coax out what little participation he could get, when Stolek gave up and knocked the shields down entirely in a fit of childish rage. Petty anger and boiling over frustration flooded the ship.

A fight broke out in security. Someone in engineering threw a wrench at a console that just wasn’t working, it would need to be replaced next time they docked. Thirty-seven personnel complaints and allegations of misconduct had been filed, and Kirk would have to go through them all.

“Stolek is only eight years of age,” Spock explained. “He has no training in the Vulcan ways. It is to my understanding that a ‘temper tantrum’ is quite common for Terran children of his age. Some difficulties are to be expected.”

Jim couldn’t believe  _Spock_ —of all people—was defending a highly disruptive emotional outburst to him, Jim Kirk, human mess. Somehow things had gotten very weirdly switched around.

“Spock, we can’t go on like this. I’m trying to run a ship here. I can’t have the entire crew going berserk every half hour while you try to teach a bunch of Vulcan kids how  _not_  to read minds.”

“The difficulties they are having with shielding were unanticipated, but it is nevertheless a vital skill that they must learn, preferably before arriving on New Vulcan. Prospective parents will likely be reluctant to take in a child who has been through such trauma and broadcasts it freely. Given this, I cannot in good conscience discontinue the children’s education.”

“Okay, well if this is gonna continue, we’re gonna have to lay down some ground rules for how this class is run. From now on you don’t work with any one student for more than an hour at a time. They need breaks so that they don’t snap.”

“Understood.”

“And no more than two hours a day per kid.”

He nodded his assent.

“And there will be a non-Vulcan monitor in the room at all times to make sure things don’t get to this point in the first place.”

Spock bristled. “That is hardly necessary. I assure you I am competent enough to teach simple telepathic exercises to those unfamiliar with them without the aid of a human to mediate. I have sufficient experience with more emotional beings so as to understand their limitations.”

“I’m not doubting your competence. All I’m saying is two of your students had breakdowns on the first day. How many kids did you really work with today?”

“All of them received instruction in the basic concepts of shielding and how to pr—“

“Spock.”

“—however, only three were involved in mind melds with me so as to more fully demonstrate the process.”

“Three. So, two out of three,” he said. “Human monitor. You aren’t getting out of this. Just someone to sit in the back and step in before any of the kids get overwhelmed. You won’t even know they’re there.”

Spock couldn’t read emotions for shit. Jim supposed that made sense, given the circumstances. He had grown up on a planet where the height of physical expressiveness was a single raised eyebrow—an expert in reading facial cues he was not.

And telepathy or no, he would never read someone’s mind without permission unless absolutely necessary, and apparently even within a meld he couldn’t draw the line between normal emotional output and someone being dangerously close to overwhelmed. An unfortunate side effect of being raised to think  _all_  emotional output was too much.

A supervisor from a species that embraced or at least tolerated emotion. They could keep an eye on things and look out for warning signs that Spock would apparently miss and intervene to give the kids a break before they broke down and sent out a psychic EMP throughout the ship.

Spock acquiesced. The two of them left the briefing room together and stood in silence in the turbolift. Just as they were about to part ways—

“Spock?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“You were wrong.”

“I am aware, Captain.”


	5. Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for implications of rape. Skip from the second line break to the third if you want to avoid it.
> 
> Also I forgot to mention if Saavik seems ooc that's just nature versus nurture. She' going to be raised primarily around humans in this au, so expect emotional displays and physical affection.

Old Vulcan had been right on the edge of the Neutral Zone, and travelling between the two would have taken a day, maybe less. But after the planet got destroyed, they decided to relocate to a safer part of space, practically right in the center of Federation territory. It caused some diplomatic strain, as certain ties became less important and others came to the fore. But no one was complaining about having less to do with the Tellarites.

That aspect had been mentioned specifically when the colony was being planned.

If it had been a shorter trip, it would have made sense to keep the kids in sickbay the entire time. But it wasn’t, and it didn’t sit right with Jim to keep them confined to one room after they had just escaped literal cages. They needed to know that this place was safe, that they were free, that they could trust them. Even if it was only for eleven days.

Besides, the kids were too weak to really venture that far and get into trouble anyway. Jim had come to realize that Saavik was actually better off than most. After all, he was only half-starved. Apparently Sgon had been in the cage next to him and he had looked out for the kid, towards the end. That was probably the only thing that kept Saavik alive, as young as he was. Jim made a note to thank Sgon for that, make sure he knew how selfless that was. How exceptional.

Bones said the kids weren’t stable enough yet to hold down solid food, so for now they were being fed intravenously from a bag hanging on a little metal pole they could wheel around. They had been introduced to the sonic showers and given clean, warm clothes to wear—a fact for which they seemed all too grateful. The temperature in sickbay was turned up ten degrees Celsius. Wheelchairs were provided to those too weak to walk.

Bones had told them they were free to go wherever they pleased but not many had taken him up on the offer. Still deathly afraid of strangers.

So Jim was fairly surprised when Saavik approached him in the rec room while he was playing poker with Gaila and Scotty.

“Something’s wrong with T’Mai,” the child said, breathless, eyes wide, grip tight on the IV pole as if using it for support.

“T’Mai?”

“Subject 301.”

The dead-eyed seventeen-year-old. So she  _did_  have a name.

He put his cards down, standing quickly. “Where is she?” Obviously not sickbay, if Saavik had to seek him out to get help.

“The quiet room. With the buzzy air,” Saavik said, tugging on his sleeve. “Come  _on.”_

He had no clue what that meant, so Jim let Saavik lead him. Unfortunately, they didn’t get far. The kid was way too weak for this level of exertion, especially after searching half the ship looking for him.

“Saavik.” He put a gentle hand on his shoulder, halting their progress. “How about you tell me where to go and I carry you the rest of the way? Would that be okay?”

The child nodded, and Jim scooped him up, settling the light weight in one of his arms and using the other to push the IV pole. “Saavik, this is very important. Where is the quiet room?”

“Under.”

Under. “Did you use the turbolift to get here?” With the child’s nod, Jim veered and turned around, heading to the nearest one at a rapid pace.

And then, god, he had to pick a floor. It was no use asking Saavik how far ‘under’—the kid had no way of counting floors. “Describe the quiet room for me.”

“It’s… big,” Saavik said. “There’s lights. The people there are red and shouty. It’s quiet.”

Sounded like the gym, except for the lights comment. It was lit exactly the same as the rest of the ship, and the only reason Jim could think of for lights to noteworthy is that they were the small, brightly colored lights of a control console.

Security, maybe? They all wore red down there. Though he had no idea why they would all be shouting at each other, and it wasn’t  _that_  big a room.

Better than nothing. He gave the command to the turbolift and waited. Saavik cringed at the sense of motion, burying his head in Jim’s neck as if trying to block it out.

The doors open, and Jim set a brisk pace, beelining for the security room.

“No,” Saavik said. “Under.”

Jim stopped. “This is under.”

A shake of the head. “No. Under  _more.”_

Jim tried to stop himself from screaming and headed back to the turbolift. T’Mai could be bleeding out for all he knew, and he couldn’t even direct medics on where to go because the only person who knew what was going on was a six-year-old with all the communication skills of a rock.

“Can you give me any more information, Saavik? Tell me something else about the quiet room. Please,” he said.

“Not a lot of people there. The air is buzzy. Like this.” Saavik did jazz hands and made a humming noise.

Okay. Okay. Jim could figure this out. It was like the linguistics problem from hell, and while that wasn’t his forte, he hadn’t failed any of those classes either.

It was someplace quiet, allegedly, but full of shouting people and some static buzz in the air. So maybe “quiet” wasn’t all that accurate. It was a big room on one of the lower decks, somewhere beneath the level security was on. The people there were red. That either meant sweaty humans or operations officers.

“When you say the people are red, do you mean their skin looks red or they’re wearing red shirts?” he asked. Saavik cocked his head inquisitively. Jim grabbed the hem of his shirt to indicate it. “This thing. Was this thing red?”

A nod.

Operations. People who yelled. A big room on the lower decks.

Engineering. It had to be.

He directed the turbolift and burst out of it the second the doors opened. He had apparently guessed right, as Saavik didn’t protest and instead gave additional directions, pointing and saying “That way, that way.”

Engineering took up most of the very bottom deck, and was a largely open, echoey place. It didn’t require that many people to constantly staff it, so the few people there were in there were fairly spread out and occasionally had to call out to each other to communicate. But quiet it was not. The ship’s warp drive emitted a loud, droning hum at this distance, the type that reverberated right to your teeth and made you swear you could feel the energy running through your skin. It was accompanied by the whir and clank of moving machinery, the intermittent beeping from some of the monitors.

That was the buzzy air, he supposed.

They took a convoluted path into the depths of engineering, far away from where anyone had any real reason to be. Saavik finally stopped them in some unlit back corner that was honestly just excess space and had to be pressed up against the ship’s hull.

“T’Mai!” Saavik cried, squirming out of Jim’s grasp and running to her, yanking the IV line out in the process.

T’Mai was slumped on the ground, fallen out of her wheelchair, unconscious. She didn’t look like she was in pain, but then, she looked more dead than alive.

Jim rushed to the nearest intercom and ordered medics down to engineering, giving as thorough directions as he could and telling them to bring M’Benga.

* * *

 

Bones cursed when he saw her, already whipping out a scanner while two orderlies transferred T’Mai from a stretcher to a biobed. A curtain was pulled, giving them relative privacy and keeping the other kids from seeing this. “What happened, Jim?”

“I don’t know, I just found her like this. Saavik was the one who brought me to her.”

“Saavik?” he asked. The child didn’t respond, twisting his fingers together. He didn’t seem to realize he was being spoken to.

Bones crouched in front of him, looking the kid directly in the eye. “Saavik. I need you to tell me what happened to your friend here.”

That just made him look more confused than ever. He had probably never heard the word ‘friend’ before, Jim realized. “He means what happened to T’Mai. What was going on right before you came to find me?”

“Um,” he said. “We went to the quiet place, ‘cause there was too many people here. They think loud. But then she got sick. It…” he put his hands low on his stomach, “hurted. She fell.” His chin began to wobble, voice distorting along with it.

Bones began a more intensive level of scanning on her abdomen.

“Hey, shhh, it’s okay, you did the right thing. T’Mai’s gonna be just fine,” Jim said. “That was very smart of you coming to get me. You always do that whenever anything goes wrong, okay? You did a good thing.”

“Jim. Come over here,” Bones said soberly.

“What is it?” He pitched his voice low, hoping in vain that no prying Vulcan ears would pick up on it.

“It looks like T’Mai had a miscarriage about two or three weeks ago. Probably brought on by the stress of starvation. It was never taken care of properly, and now her womb is infected.”

“The unconscious state she has gone into is not a coma. It is a Vulcan healing trance—a method of shutting down all unnecessary functions so that the body can fully devote itself to recovery,” M’Benga supplied. “The condition is serious, but the fact that she was able to go into a healing trance at all is a good sign.”

“Is there anything you guys can do to help it along? What do we do at this point?” Jim asked.

The two doctors shared a look. “She needs surgery. The infection has to be cleared out completely. With it this advanced, flushing it out with fluids will only get us so far,” M’Benga said.

Jim didn’t like that look. “Okay,” he said. “So do the surgery.”

“We can’t. We don’t know how,” M’Benga said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know how?” Jim sputtered. “I thought you interned at a Vulcan ward! And no offense, but it sounds like it’s a pretty easy procedure. By all counts in my book, you should be able to just… do it.”

“It’s not that simple,” McCoy said, just as M’Benga began, “Vulcan reproductive biology is kept a closely guarded secret. Even as one of the few outworlder physicians there, there were sections of the hospital I was never allowed into. Their reproductive ward handled all sexual health, not just maternity, and it was strictly Vulcans-only.”

“She’s got a whole different system in there, Jim,” McCoy continued. “Everything’s in the wrong place, a different shape, a different size, the way the blood works is completely new… She’s got some gland that I’ve never seen anything like on any species I’ve ever studied, god knows what it does. Hell, her organs alone are a mess and a half. It’s like… It’s like we’ve been sent an encrypted code in Klingon and we only speak Standard and you’re still asking us to tell you what it says.”

“Even with a fairly simple procedure such as this, if we don’t know what we’re doing—or even what her normal readouts are supposed to be—we could do irreparable harm without even knowing it,” M’Benga said.

Jim nodded. This was the part where he was supposed to come up with a plan. A captain-y executive decision that saved lives and inspired awe and had better fucking work. “Hook up T’Vchon and T’Diisth to some monitors, take a ton of scans on them, and use their readouts as a baseline.” He stepped up to an intercom and pressed the button. “Commander Spock, report to sickbay.”

“T’Vchon and T’Diisth are hardly healthy enough subjects to use as a reliable baseline,” McCoy protested. “And they’re only fourteen and fifteen. Changes in the reproductive system hit  _fast_  between their ages and T’Mai’s. They’re at completely different stages of development. Relyin’ on their info as a guide to where T’Mai should be is risky at best and malpractice at worst.”

“On the contrary, doctor,” Spock said, startling them all with his presence. He had apparently come in unobserved and caught the last part of their conversation, quickly inferring what was going on. “Vulcans reach sexual maturity at a much slower rate than humans, typically sometime in the third or fourth decade of life. Any developmental differences between the girls at that close an age range would be negligible.”

Third or fourth decade. Twenties or thirties. Right where he was right now. It hit Jim like a ton of bricks that Spock—his first officer, who was three years older than him, a former professor at the Academy—was essentially still a teenager in his culture. Or just barely out of it. Somewhere in there.

He wondered if that statement could have possibly been more vague. Humans set sexual maturity at a single year—eighteen—but apparently Vulcans couldn’t even narrow it down to a single decade.

“So what you’re telling me is this is the Vulcan equivalent of a pregnant nine year old,” McCoy said. “That changes things. A lot.”

Spock raised an eyebrow in an expression that wasn’t quite shock. “T’Mai is pregnant?”

“Was,” Bones said gruffly. “Miscarried a few weeks ago. Given what you just told me, it’s a damn good thing she did. If carrying a baby to term hadn’t killed her, then going through labor would have.”

“Can any of the fetus’s genetic material be salvaged?” Spock asked. “It could be beneficial to determine what the third phase of the experiments would have included, given the possibility of them being revisited in the future.”

“Third phase?” Jim asked.

“I have concluded that the experiments done on the child survivors were the second phase in a broader experiment. The children’s statements that they had living Vulcan parents means that adult Vulcans were held captive on Hellguard for years and their bodies were used for their reproductive capabilities. It is therefore logical to conclude that experiments were done on them in regards to their fertility,” he said. “The children represent the second generation of the experiment, in which their minds were used to test Vulcan telepathic capabilities and to examine the possibility of using mind control in a military setting. It can only be concluded that T’Mai’s pregnancy was intentional. As she is one of the oldest of the second phase subjects, it is likely that the Romulans got… impatient, while waiting for the children to mature.”

Jim felt sick to his stomach.

“Is T’Mai going to be okay?” came a quiet voice. The men startled and looked to its source, where Saavik had crawled up onto the biobed, fingers pressed into T’Mai’s meldpoints. They had frankly forgotten the kid was there.

Spock was surprised that one so inexperienced was able to remain cognizant of the outside world while in a meld, something even he had not mastered. But then, given Saavik’s history, perhaps the child wasn’t actually that inexperienced.

And he was definitely concerned that she had initiated a meld without consent. He would need to talk to the children about that. Just because they were forced to do it on Hellguard does not mean it is acceptable.

“Jim, get that kid outta here. He doesn’t need to be hearing this,” McCoy hissed.

“She,” Saavik corrected.

His face flushed. “She. Sorry about that, little darlin’.” He glared daggers at Jim, as if this was his fault.

Which it sorta was, but still.

Jim quickly ushered Saavik out of sickbay—assuring her T’Mai would be fine—as the doctors began scanning the other two teenage girls. Bones set Spock down with a padd and a stylus and told him to “think back to your most embarrassing eighth grade health class and draw me a diagram.”

The doors to sickbay closed.

Jim cleared his throat. “So. Saavik! You want a tour of the ship?”

Saavik stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Um, you want me to show you around, tell you where everything is?” She nodded enthusiastically.

And so they wandered through the ship. People smiled and some stopped to say hello to Saavik. Most knew better than to ask any personal questions, given the nature of their latest mission, but those who didn’t got a firm “That’s classified” from Jim. Everyone at least knew not to touch the kid. Spock had sent out a shipwide memo reminding the crew of touch telepathy and Vulcan courtesy standards.

They took plenty of breaks, just sitting on the ground and talking so Saavik didn’t get overworked. She was a bright kid. Jim had expected a measure of precocity from all the Vulcans, but still, he didn’t expect a six-year-old who didn’t know the word ‘friend’ to be able to follow his explanation of how the replicators transformed molecules into anything. Her main problem was a lack of vocabulary, and she had an endless supply of questions.

Saavik seemed very aware of others’ presence. She was almost painfully shy, hiding behind Jim’s legs when strangers passed by, avoiding eye contact, giving everyone but Jim a berth of at least three feet. She, in general, did not respond when spoken to.

She hated the turbolift and the transporter room. She loved the observation deck, calling it quiet and staring in awe at the stars.

It was probably the first time she had ever seen them. Jim let her soak it in for as long as she liked. They watched the stars whiz past for over an hour.

* * *

 

Saavik rushed onto the bridge in a stream of giggles. She seemed to freeze when she realized she was surrounded by strangers, but then her eyes lit on Uhura, a face she recognized.

She used one hand to move the other into a clumsy ta’al. “Dif-tor heh smusma Uhura-an.”

“Dif-tor heh smusma, Saavik-kam.” Uhura smiled gently, returning the gesture and projecting encouraging thoughts.

“Oh gee, I wonder where Saavik could have gone,” a voice called out loudly from the hallway.

Saavik gasped and darted past her, scrambling to hide under the communications console. Uhura rolled her seat back so that she was mostly obscured from view.

Jim entered the bridge, a wide grin on his face. “Miss Uhura,” he said, “have you seen Saavik? I’ve been looking for her everywhere.”

“No, Captain. Haven’t seen her.”

A giggle came from the communications console.

“Uhura,” Jim said in over-exaggerated awe. “Did the communications console just  _giggle?”_

“I believe it did, sir,” she said.

“No, it can’t be,” he said, still sounding so incredibly amazed. “A sentient computer? This whole time? And with a sense of humor? It sounds too good to be true. We better check things out.”

Uhura rolled back in her chair to allow the inspection. Jim’s jaw dropped. He looked genuinely dumbstruck. “Oh my god, Saavik! There you are! Here I was, thinking we had a giggling computer, but it was you the whole time, wasn’t it?”

She nodded, smiling and ducking her head as she crawled out from under the desk. Jim promptly scooped her up and spun her around, eliciting further giggles.

“Hey,” he said suddenly, resting her on his hip. “You wanna sit in the captain’s chair?”

Her eyes went wide. “Can I?”

Jim responded by striding over to the center of the bridge and plopping her down in it. “Course you can. I’m the captain. I have final say over who gets to sit in the chair.”

Saavik swooshed her feet to spin a bit, examining the buttons on the chair’s arms that Jim hastily told her not to touch. She gazed out over the bridge, like a queen surveying her domain.

“You’re in charge of  _everything?”_  she asked. They had already been over what a captain’s role was, as she had been curious what the word meant after several crewmen had addressed him by it.

“Well not  _everything_  everything. But everything on the ship, yeah.”

“Woah,” Saavik breathed. She considered that for a moment, brow furrowing in consternation, then nodded. “I’m going to be a captain too someday. Just like you.”

Jim’s heart swelled until he thought it was going to burst.


	6. Adoption

Things went a bit more smoothly, as they got settled into the journey. T’Mai’s surgery was successful. The ship’s counselor makes a preliminary assessment of each of the survivors—a painfully slow and emotionally taxing process, Jim’s sure.

The kids were steadily getting better at Vulcan. It was thankfully pretty easy for them to learn. Vulcan and Romulan shared a lot of similarities. They were alike in the way Spanish and Italian were alike; not mutually intelligible, but you could get the general gist and make an educated guess if you spoke one but not the other. The differences were little things—rule exceptions, a slight variation in how it was pronounced, the vocabulary was a little off. And the spelling was way more complicated.

Learning to write the language brought up a whole new set of problems. The idea of writing down sounds was completely foreign to them. They had to be taught the Vulcan writing system from scratch and instructed carefully in handwriting the way first graders were. Most of them looked so out of place during those lessons, far too old to be struggling to get a certain letter just right, intently focused and getting frustrated when they made a mistake. Frankly, Jim didn’t blame them. Vulcan words were written horizontally, in elaborate looping swirls and dots running down a straight line, interspersed with the occasional sideways dash.

It didn’t look like any form of writing Jim had ever seen before. It was beautiful, yes, but completely incomprehensible. He couldn’t even make out individual letter or characters or symbols or anything. It looked more like sheet music than a system of writing.

“It is,” Uhura had said. “Even on Earth, music notes correspond to both sounds and letters. Vulcans cut out the middleman.”

…There was something oddly poetic about that. The idea that Vulcans wrote in music rather than letters. He had sort of assumed they had nothing to do with music. It seemed like a silly emotional pastime.

And yet.

* * *

 

Jim knew that he was supposed to keep his distance from Saavik. That getting attached would only hurt them both. That it wasn’t fair to the little girl he would be leaving behind when he got back in his spaceship and flew far away.

But when she showed up at the door to his quarters, near frozen with terror after a nightmare, what was he supposed to do? Turn her away?

Well, he did know what he  _wasn’t_  supposed to do. He wasn’t supposed to invite her in. He wasn’t supposed to sit her down on the couch and wrap a blanket around her shoulders. Wasn’t supposed to replicate her a glass of warm milk. Wasn’t supposed to sit down on the couch with her and ask if she wanted to tell him about it.

If those are the sort of things he wasn’t supposed to do then maybe ‘supposed to’ is bullshit.

He definitely wasn’t supposed to say she could stay here if she was too scared to sleep alone. And he probably shouldn’t have let her crawl into his bed just because she was scared and cold and he wasn’t.

Jim looked down at the small child nestled up against his side, clutching him like a teddy bear, like a lifeline. She’s frowning in her sleep, not quite as relaxed as she should be, big curls shifting and tickling his arm with every slightest movement.

He wasn’t supposed to get attached.

Wasn’t supposed to.

She curled in closer subconsciously, obviously seeking refuge from a nightmare, and in that moment, Jim knew that he was doomed.

* * *

 

Spock uploaded the children’s files to the list of foster kids in need of homes. Jim kept waiting for potential families to trickle in, but it kept not happening and not happening until  _finally_  six days in something happened.

“T’Mai has been adopted,” Spock announced calmly, reading from his PADD.

 _“Adopted?_ What—?” Jim asked dumbly.

Spock looked at him inquisitively. “Is that not the ideal situation for all of the survivors?”

“Yes, it’s just—unusual, I guess,” he said. “Typically humans don’t adopt someone they’ve never met. Agreeing to foster a kid, sure, but adoption is… permanent.”

“The fact that it is called the foster system is a bit of a translation error. It would be illogical for willing and capable parents to rescind their care from a child in need for any reason. Not to mention the potential psychological damage such instability could inflict upon a child.”

“Oh. Well that’s very—“ sweet “—logical.” Jim hid a smile with a cough. “Still. I wasn’t expecting T’Mai to be the first kid outta the bunch to get snatched up. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely girl, but y’know… she’s seventeen.” Jim had fully expected to see her age out of the system before getting placed with anyone.

“While her age may have been a factor in her placement, I doubt it was to her detriment. Vulcans typically have small and temporally distant families. While the culture is changing, it does not—as you would say—happen overnight. The values are still there, the traditions are still there. With the recent decimation of the species, it is more logical to adopt a change who will need care for a shorter length of time. Afterwards, the parents’ resources will be freed up, allowing them to adopt another. This is the most efficient way of raising the maximum amount of children in the minimum amount of time.”

Jim stilled, hand hovering over the padd where he had been about to sign off his approval of the setup. “Is T’Mai going to get kicked out of the house once she turns eighteen?”

Spock looked like that thought had never occurred to him. “It would not be logical to displace a person from their home before they are ready,” he said, but he sounded a little doubtful. “May I?” He extended his hand to take the padd from Jim, who obliged.

Spock opened the family file and read through it, eyes flicking across the lines at the speed of light. “The G’Aal Mira clan,” he murmured. “Noble. Wealthy, fairly respected. She’ll be well provided for. Their house is known for its generosity. She will be the third orphan they have adopted since the genocide. All of them are teenagers.”

“That was in the file?”

“Their adoption history was. The knowledge of their house is my own.”

“So… you know the family, then. Are they good people?” What are the chances that Spock just happened to know the family that took in T’Mai? He knew the remaining number of Vulcans was low—like small town low—but still. Spock hadn’t even spent any time at the colony, as far as he knew.

“Define ‘good,’” Spock requested.

“You know. Kind. Loving. Generous, like you said. Not ragingly xenophobic.”

“I believe they meet those criteria adequately,” Spock said. “I doubt anyone ‘ragingly xenophobic’ would volunteer to shelter and provide for a half-Romulan child.”

Jim cast him a look, then nodded and signed his approval.

The placements began to trickle in after that, with the older kids going first, mostly. Next went Synak and T’Vchon and T’Diisth. Sgon went to a couple who had been trying to have biological children for years and had adopted five since the genocide. Stridvak and T’Vau went next. T’Frav went to a poor older couple who led a quiet life and couldn’t take in more than one but wanted to help. T’Penn and Stolek were the last to be claimed before they reached the colony.

That left four displaced children. Saavik. T’Sahn, age eight. Sednar and Solgar, twins, age ten.

“Vulcans do not have twins,” Spock said. “Their existence and the telepathic bond between them has generated some interest in the scientific community. The Vulcan Science Academy has offered to take them in as wards of the institution.”

“Oh hell no,” Jim said. “No one is ever doing experiments on any of these kids again, you hear me?”

“Your volume is adequate.”

Placing the twins had been an unexpected problem. Jim refused to let them be separated, but parents were wary of taking in not one but two young, half-Romulan twins whose telepathic needs were a complete mystery. T’Penn and Stolek had both been under ten and gotten placed, but the twins were… unique, in a lot of ways.

Bones had told him he needed to accept that he couldn’t save everyone. That some of the kids would have to be on their own and there was nothing he could do about it. That he would have to leave them behind anyway, no matter what.

Jim had scoffed.

* * *

 

The crew would be taking shore leave for one week, but building hotels hadn’t been top priority here, so they would be staying in the sprawling volunteers’ barracks. It had a depressingly high number of empty beds and empty rooms. They had anticipated more help than they got.

A lot of the crew elected to remain on board. They were referring to it as a ‘staycation.’

Spock stayed in his father’s mansion. He had been told by his alternate universe self that he and his father had not spoken for eighteen years following his enrollment in Starfleet Academy. This was not the case for himself, however. It seemed to be the one instance in which this universe was kinder than the other one.

In the other universe, Spock had had a mother but no father. In this universe, the situation was reversed.

Spock spent his time attending to post-mission paperwork in one of his father’s guest offices. He was just finishing off a report on the exfiltration when his comm beeped and alerted him the captain was in the hospital.

He quickly abandoned his work and headed there. Vulcans do not feel emotions, and as such neither does Spock, but he could estimate that a human at this time might feel concern or worry.

Then he got to the hospital, was informed of the situation, and estimated a human might feel irritation.

His estimate proved correct, as he soon spotted McCoy, flagrantly demonstrating irritation.

“Oh good, Spock’s here. Do you know what your dumbass captain did today?” he asked.

“A nurse has already informed me of the situation.”

“Well you’re gonna hear it again. I’m not done ranting,” McCoy said, and Spock resigned himself to his fate. It seemed that the doctor was  _never_  done ranting.

“This  _dumbass,”_  he gestured to Jim in the biobed, who rolled his eyes, “decides he’ll spend his shore leave crawling all over the side of some building, nothing to hold him up but some rickety scaffolding—“

“That’s just how construction is, it was perfectly sa—“

“—gets sunburnt down to his bones, and he’s damn lucky none of the burns were more serious. Prolly got skin cancer—“

“I put on sunscreen!”

“—and then passes out from heatstroke! The only reason you didn’t crack your thick skull open fallin’ off the scaffolding was ‘cause some Vulcan caught you on the way down.”

“They needed help building the school, Bones, and besides, what else am I supposed to do here?”

“Not die! Very simple!” He punctuated each word with a sarcastic clap.

“Captain, I must point out that if you had followed regulation regarding volunteers from temperate climates and taken the required breaks, this would not have happened. Humans are not as capable of maintaining homeostasis in this environment as Vulcans are, and so require time spent in the shade and a steady supply of water. Additionally, due to the degree of your sunburn, it is apparent you were using only Earth-strength sunblock and were not reapplying it as the situation called for it.”

“Shit,” McCoy glanced at the message on his comm, calling him away. “I’ve gotta go. Don’t think we’re done with this conversation. I had the authorities ban you from all volunteer work!”

And with that, the doctor was gone. Spock clasped his hands behind him at parade rest. “Captain, may I inquire why you allowed yourself to pass out?”

“Not everyone is Vulcan, Spock. It wasn’t exactly a choice,” he said dryly.

“Why did you exert yourself past the point of tolerability?” he clarified.

“Oh.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and instantly regretted it. “Uh, I dunno. It felt good.”

“It felt good,” Spock repeated.

“I mean. The exertion, it was a nice distraction.” He sighed. “Look, I know this is your planet and everything, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but I hate being here. I hate that we left four of those kids without a family to turn to. I hate that the twins are probably going to get split up after this. And I really hate that I’m going to have to leave Saavik behind at the end of the week.”

Spock cocked his head. “Do you wish not to?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. Why?”

“Have you considered adopting her yourself?”

Jim frowned. “I thought you said it was  _necessary_  for these kids to live on the colony. In order to live a full life.”

“I said that their gaining Vulcan citizenship, along with its rights and privileges, was necessary. Vulcans do not need to live on the homeworld in perpetuity. I thought my current status made that fairly obvious.”

“So what you’re saying here,” he spoke slowly, waiting to be corrected, “is that I could adopt Saavik? And everything would be fine? That wouldn’t permanently screw up her life or anything?”

“Provided you are an adequate father, no, it would not.”

“Oh my god,” he said. “Okay—just, just give me a second here.”

‘An adequate father.’ He would be a dad. If he did this, he would be someone’s dad, and he would be responsible for not screwing them over. Not screwing them up, either. Saavik definitely didn’t deserve a shitty parent making things even worse for her than they already were. She deserved the best.

Her alternative was sitting around in the crappy temporary building that passed as the colonial orphanage until she got old enough to be worth someone’s while.

With the rate the kids had been placed, though, it was likely she would find a family within days or weeks at the most. Jim shouldn’t kid himself. He wasn’t her only option. She could have a real, stable family waiting for her, she just… didn’t yet.

Would that be better? Was he selfish to even consider this? A starship was no place to raise a kid. Even a slightly abnormal kid who thought they were cool. And he couldn’t deprive her of being around her own people.

But the thought of leaving her behind for good made him sick.

“Do you think I could do it?” he asked. “Raise a kid, I mean? I’ve never had that kind of responsibility before. If I screw up, I don’t get any do-overs.”

Spock did the thing with his eyes where he smiled without ever moving his mouth. “The fact that you consider this a responsibility of unprecedented magnitude despite running a starship and ensuring the safety of 432 lives proves you are more than qualified. Would you like me to look into arrangements?”

And somehow Jim found himself nodding.


	7. Wedding Day

Jim wasn’t going to do one single thing until he was sure this was something Saavik wanted. He sat down beside her on a cot at the orphanage.

“Saavik,” he said. God, he was nervous. He hadn’t had this much trouble with a question since the first time he asked a girl out. That seemed like a piece of cake in comparison to this. “Would you like me to adopt you?”

Adopt. When a family takes someone they aren’t related to and makes them one of their own.

“We… would be family?” she asked.

Jim nodded. “And you’d live on the Enterprise with me. I’d be your dad, and you’d be my daughter.”

“Dad,” she said, testing out the word.

“It means a male parent.”

“I know.”

Right. Biological parents. Living, biological parents that the kids had been aware of as more than just genetic samples. He didn’t know if Saavik was old enough to remember hers, he didn’t know when they had been killed, he didn’t know if she missed them, he didn’t know anything. He was a fish out of water here.

“And you won’t leave again?” she asked in a wobbly voice. Jim’s heart clenched.

“Never,” he promised.

She threw her arms around his neck in a tight hug, crying and smiling.

* * *

 

“I have unfortunate news,” Spock said. “You are not eligible to adopt Saavik. Vulcan adoptions are closed to all but Vulcan citizens.”

Jim stopped cold. “But I promised her.”

“There are ways around this. Either she must forfeit her citizenship—“ Hell no. Not after everything they did to get it for her. “—or you must become a citizen yourself.”

“And the only way to do that is—“

“—marriage to a Vulcan citizen.”

The implicit, obvious solution hung in the air like an anvil. Jim didn’t dare suggest it. He barely dared to breathe. He couldn’t ask this of Spock. He couldn’t.

“You could marry me,” Spock said finally. “If you wish.”

Jim breathed out. “Spock, I—I don’t know how to thank you. This means so much to me, and the fact that you’re willing to— _to marry me—“_

“It won’t be a real marriage,” he said crisply.

“Right, no, of course,” Jim spread his hands placatingly. “In name only. Things won’t change at all between us. Everything stays exactly the way it is.”

* * *

 

“You’re getting  _what?!”_  Bones shrieked.

“Married. To Spock,” he said. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just a sham marriage. I only need you there to keep me from bolting at the last second.”

Spock had told him he was allowed two guests and asked if there was anyone he wanted to invite. There was a ton of people he wanted to invite—sham marriage or no, this was probably the only wedding James Tiberius Kirk was going to have. He wanted to invite his mother, his brother, all of Riverside, that one bitchy ex who said he wasn’t ‘marriage material’…

Then Spock had said they could get married in about three hours because he had some paperwork to do first and Jim decided he just wanted Bones there. No one else was close enough anyway.

“This is the dumbest idea you’ve ever had  _in your life!”_

* * *

Typically the next step would be to create a betrothal bond between them, but since it was a fake marriage anyway, Spock decided it didn’t matter. They could just elope straight away.

They went to the place of marriage, the koon-ut-kal-if-fee. Jim was marched in a wedding procession along a rock path high in the sky to a small, leveled-off mountain peak encased in rough-hewn columns.

He was in some godawful robes of shiny, metallic fabric that kept the dust off but didn’t breathe for shit. Bones had injected him with a tri-ox compound before they came here but still, the walk was long and it was hot. The air was even thinner up here than was normal for New Vulcan. He had been gasping for breath within the first three minutes of the hike, embarrassingly.

This was not how he pictured his wedding day going. To be honest, he didn’t picture himself ever having a wedding day. It wasn’t that he was opposed to the idea—he believed in true love and The One and all that jazz—he just couldn’t see himself making that big a commitment, romantically. His relationships tend to be on the short side, more flings than anything else. That’s just the way it is and he’s never pushed for more.

The ceremony began with Jim woozy on his feet. In a moment that absolutely terrified him, Spock pledged for Bones’ behavior with his life, which certainly made Bones straighten up. Two members of the wedding party were shaking instruments that looked like modified abacuses and honestly, Jim wouldn’t put it past Vulcans to do something like that. Spock ceremonially hit the gong again and then knelt before T’Pau— _the_  T’Pau, one of the elders who had been in the conference call from hell with them—for a mind meld.

Jim was nervous she was going to say something about what she saw there. There was no way she didn’t know it was a fake marriage. But she said nothing, gave nothing away, not even a flicker of anything on her face.

Spock hit the gong again for the last time, and now both he and Jim knelt before T’Pau. She placed a hand on both their faces and suddenly—

they were swirling together, they were—

bright sunshine and cool smooth blue, warmth and dynamism being reflected off that perfect order—

that  _imperfect_  order, and all the more beautiful for it—

swirling and running and tangling together irrevocably—

together and beautiful and gasping in their minds and—

Over.

T’Pau retracted her hands. “I declare thee bonded.”

* * *

 

Jim felt it immediately. Spock’s presence in his mind, a second set of thoughts mixed in with his own. It felt good and natural and—

Gone.

Just as soon as he had felt it, it had slipped away, leaving an aching sense of loss in its place.

* * *

 

Jim headed straight to the orphanage, adoption papers in hand. He went first to the administrator in charge of the place, allowing a light, barely felt meld to show proof of bond before getting their necessary signature.

Saavik was waiting for him on her cot expectantly.

“Ms. Uhura taught you how to sign your name, right?” he asked. Strictly speaking, the line for child’s consent wasn’t a required field—as some adoptees were too young to sign it, but it was important to him that it be filled.

He gave Saavik a manual stylus and she scritched onto the scroll what looked for all intents and purposes to be a choppy doodle. The lines weren’t smooth, the circles were neither closed nor really circular, and the whole thing angled lopsidedly to the right.

Jim was going to hang it up in his quarters when he got home.

He added his own signature written in Standard, having to turn the scroll sideways to write it on the vertical line.

Crappy wedding or no, it was a good day all in all.

* * *

 

The rest of the week passed in a blur. T’Sahn was adopted later that very day. Jim and Spock vetted and rejected another potential home for the twins. They only managed to find a suitable one the second to last day of the week. Jim was relieved beyond belief.

For all his griping, Bones was actually very supportive of Jim adopting Saavik. He recommended that she be given a therapy animal that she could connect to, as sort of a stepping stone towards socializing with sapient beings.

There weren’t any pet stores on New Vulcan and none of the native animals were suitable to bring on a starship, though Spock insisted that sehlats were perfectly trainable and made excellent pets. Jim eventually found a shady guy named Harry Mudd who sold him an overly fluffy canine with antennae and a single horn. The man refused to answer what species it was or where it came from, but it seemed tame enough and the tricorder didn’t show any toxins or hidden poison sacs, so Jim paid ten credits for it.

That was way too steep for what essentially amounted to a stray dog, but he had no other options on the entire planet and Mudd knew that.

“What’s that?” Saavik had asked when he brought the creature back to the volunteer barracks. She now resided on the bunk next to his, which was a marginal improvement from the cot in the orphanage.

“This is a… dog,” Jim said. He knew for a fact it had to be at least part insectoid to have antennae like that, but what else was he supposed to call it?

This was probably Saavik’s first encounter with a non-humanoid, he realized.

“It’s a pet. For you. You take care of him and he’ll be your friend,” he said. Then he realized that was misleading. “Uh, he can’t talk. He’s not quite as smart as you and I are. But he’s nice and he likes to be scratched. Like this.”

He scratched the dog under the chin, eliciting closed eyes and a wagging tail.

Saavik cautiously approached and Jim stepped back, letting her take his place. She scratched the dog tentatively at first, then more earnestly when it was clear he wouldn’t attack. The dog flopped over onto his back, exposing his stomach. Taking the cue, Saavik began scratching there instead.

Saavik read a social cue.

Intergalactic mutt or not, maybe the thing actually would make a good therapy animal.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“That’s up to you. He doesn’t have one yet, so you get to pick one out for him.”

“What if I pick the wrong one? Then we’d be calling him by the wrong name forever, and we won’t even know his real one.”

“No, there’s no such thing as a wrong name. Whatever you choose will be perfect. I’m sure he’ll love it.”

She still looked concerned. “I don’t know how to name a dog.”

“Oh, well that’s easy. You can pick anything you like.”

“Anything?”

And that was how the dog got named Bumberfuffle because Saavik thought it sounded funny.

* * *

 

Back on the Enterprise, Spock knocked on the door to Jim’s quarters. “Enter,” he called out, and the door opened.

Spock came to a halt at parade rest three feet in front of where Jim was sitting, lounging on the couch and reading a padd listing potential next missions to choose from. He looked even more stiff and emotionless than normal. That was never good.

“I have informed Starfleet of our marital status, as per regulation,” he said. “As is the automatic standard procedure, the lower ranking officer has been transferred to residence in the higher ranking officer’s quarters.”

“Oh.” Jim’s eyes widened. “I bet we can call and explain and get it switched back.”

“I believe it unwise to call attention to the true nature of our bond. While Vulcan law does not specify that certain circumstances of bonding are necessary to grant citizenship, I believe that is simply due to lack of precedent. If it became common knowledge that we married purely to circumvent the law…”

“I see.” Saavik could get taken away.

Looks like they’ll be sleeping together then. But not in the fun way.

“You can take the bed, I’ll take the couch,” Jim said. Better to get it all sorted out ahead of time.

“Captain, I will not take your bed from you in your own quarters. I will sleep on the couch.”

“Spock, you  _married me_  so I could get citizenship. I owe you way too many favors to let you do that. Besides, you’re the guest here.”

“And as such, it is only natural that I make use of the secondary amenities.”

That went on for another twenty minutes, culminating in Spock saying he would sleep on the floor and Jim threatening to make them both sleep on the couch. They ended up in bed together, lying perfectly still and straight, with a full foot of cold, empty bedsheets between them.

* * *

 

Jim had thought the bond would make him hear Spock’s thoughts and feel what he felt. Nobody knew much about Vulcan bonds, but they were a legend nonetheless. Honestly, it was a bit of a letdown. He didn’t think or feel any different than he did before. The only difference between then and now was the ever-worsening migraine he had gotten as the week wore on. There was an inordinate amount of bureaucracy involved in top secret missions. He’d had to go to seven different briefings. He still wasn’t done with all the paperwork, and that was with Spock doing the lion’s share of it.

He came up with a homeschool program for Saavik. The entire bridge crew had fallen in love with her and most volunteered their services as teachers. Scotty was teaching math, and Saavik seemed especially wary of him, something that he instantly noticed and took to heart. Jim could see that he made a conscious effort to be less… boisterous, around her. And after three lessons of Saavik staring blankly into space and learning nothing, he realized she couldn’t understand his Standard and tried to meet her halfway there too.

Jim was gonna make sure he got a hell of a bonus at the end of the year. And a flask of Romulan ale to boot, he deserved it.

Uhura volunteered to continue teaching her languages even though it was no longer an official assignment and Jim told her she didn’t have to if she didn’t want to. And that was language _s_ , plural, because now Saavik was learning Standard in addition to Vulcan.

Jim was unbelievably grateful he didn’t have to find someone else from linguistics to teach. Uhura was the only person aside from himself that Saavik trusted. She still hadn’t warmed up to Spock.

Spock was teaching her science and telepathic skills—which, thank  _god,_  because he was literally irreplaceable in that regard. But they weren’t making very much progress on that front. The combination of his looks and association with telepathy and being told what to do had Saavik still responding to him like he was a Romulan.

She never spoke in his presence. She never met his eyes. When he gave instruction, she complied instantly and to the letter. Spock started asking if she wanted to do things rather than simply telling her to. All her assignments became suddenly optional. She still never responded and always just did it.

Jim could tell it was eating at him. Not through the bond like you would think, but he could still tell.

“You doin’ okay? You look drained,” McCoy said over a sip of whiskey. They and Scotty were playing rummy in the rec room.

“It’s this single parent thing Bones, it’s kicking my ass. People weren’t kidding when they said it was exhausting.”

“Amen to that,” he said. “You know, if you ever need a babysitter, all you have to do is ask. I’d be happy to take the kid off your hands for a few hours.”

He was telling the truth, too. He missed having his daughter around. He got a weekly vidcall and that was it. Being Uncle Bones and having at least one little girl to spoil was as close as he could get.

“Thanks, Bones,” Jim said, meaning it.

In truth, he was so much more than drained. This went so much deeper than just being run down from looking after a kid—it had nothing to do with Saavik. He was exhausted to his core. He wasn’t sleeping, and it wasn’t just because of the awkwardness of having Spock in bed with him.

At the same time, he felt restless and irritable. Everything was off. Nothing was wrong, but everything was off. It was like there was this soul-crushing emptiness inside him, eating at him, chewing up everything he loved and spitting it out like garbage.

What was wrong with him? This should be one of the happiest times of his life. He just adopted Saavik. He’s working his dream job. His crew is amazing and loves him almost as much as he loves them. No one has died recently. That’s pretty much as good as it gets, but he just… can’t enjoy it.

It’ll go away, he told himself. It has to.


	8. The Bond

It was eight days after he adopted her that Jim said enough was enough. He had to do something about Saavik’s hair.

It was better than it had been initially. Sonic showers had washed the dirt and grease out. The reddish rust of malnutrition was starting to fade into a richer, healthier brown. But the damage had already been done. Her hair had split ends that traveled all the way up to her chin, and split ends on those split ends. It could more accurately be described as frayed. The texture was frazzled and worn and brittle. Jim knew you weren’t supposed to brush curly hair, per se (he had looked it up), but he also knew you shouldn’t let it tangle into one giant all-consuming knot.

It needed to be cut off entirely. To be honest, Jim wasn’t sure there was very much that was salvageable at all, but he didn’t want to give Saavik a shaved head and make her look like an escaped science experiment, even if she technically was.

“You need a haircut,” he told her. They were sitting in her quarters—Spock’s recently vacated ones—with a pair of scissors and a towel on the table before them.

“A haircut is where you cut off the hair that you don’t want,” he explained. “It doesn’t hurt. You don’t have any feeling in your hair. Watch.” He picked up the scissors and snipped off a lock of his own hair.

Saavik held onto her own hair protectively, eying the scissors as he set them back down.

“Okay,” he said, seeing that this was not working. “There is an ancient human ritual called the pinky promise. You do it by joining your two smallest fingers. When you make a pinky promise, it  _has_  to be true, no matter what. So,” he crooked out his finger, “I pinky promise you that this won’t hurt.”

She looked at him warily, then extended her own finger to meet his for the briefest moment.

* * *

 

Scissors snipped near Saavik’s neck and cut away matts of hair. They fell to the ground in long clumps. It revealed a large black symbol on her neck, vertical and vaguely similar to Vulcan letters.

Jim had a feeling he knew what it meant. 528.

It wasn’t a tattoo, he realized, looking at the skin around it. No, that was too expensive and time-consuming. And it could be hypothetically removed. This was a brand.

Within half an hour, the unhealthy mass that had gone down to the small of her back had been clipped into a short bob that framed her face in a halo of curls. It didn’t look too bad, if Jim said so himself. When he held Saavik up to the adult-sized vanity to see the results, she gave a slight smile.

* * *

 

Jim was feeling even more tired than usual. He’d had a dizzy spell in the shower that morning and had had to sit down so he didn’t pass out. All his senses felt dulled and muted and gray. He knew his mind wasn’t running as fast as it usually did.

Thankfully, it was a pretty quiet day on the bridge. They were en route to Deneva on a milk run mission, and the only thing to do was maintain course. Chekov and Sulu were working. Everyone else was just passing the time. Uhura was practicing Illyrian conjugations. Scotty was down tinkering in engineering. Spock was somewhere in one of the science labs.

Jim was doing all he could not to fall asleep in the captain’s chair.

“Lights to one hundred percent,” he said, thinking maybe brightening the room would help.

“Lights are currently at one hundred percent,” the computer replied.

He huffed and shifted in his chair. He wished he had a book to read. But of course, that would be massively unprofessional and was probably against some obscure regulation somewhere.

He didn’t even have any paperwork to do.

He stifled a yawn and forced his eyes open rather than allowing them to droop. It was a weird sensation, being restless without energy. He wanted very badly  _something,_  but the lack of it had him too exhausted to do anything.

It was like he was starving and didn’t know what food was. Every cell in his body was crying out for something,  _something,_  and he had no clue what.

He couldn’t just sit like this. He would go out of his mind from boredom. He could at least walk around and get status updates from the department heads.

Decision made, he stood up, fast.

Maybe a little too fast.

“Captain? Captain!”

Everything went black.

* * *

 

Spock was testing and documenting the characteristics of a newly discovered species of fungus that morning. He hadn’t slept once in the eleven days since he had bonded with the captain and he was feeling a bit tired, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. Nothing he hadn’t handled before.

When Jim had gotten stranded on a primitive planet with an asteroid hurtling towards it and the Enterprise’s warp drive out of commission, Spock had stayed awake throughout all of the seemingly endless weeks it had taken to get the captain back. He had worked tirelessly, never resting, hardly meditating, desperate to find a solution.

So the current situation was not without precedent. He had done far more than this for the sake of his captain, and would always be willing to do so again.

He had not eaten in 5.3 standard Earth days. It was not a problem.

However, the dizziness and lightheadedness was troubling, as it prevented him from fully focusing on his work. Additionally, he was experiencing a persistent sense of irritation at a vast number of trivial matters that did not warrant it.

The lights were too bright and humming annoying. The lab was far too cold for comfort, but Spock refused to allow himself to shiver, making him even colder in the process. Every other scientist within 20 meters of him was breathing too loudly. Their mere existence was annoying.

He could not bring himself to care that such an emotion was irrational. There was a logic to it, in a sense. That logic was that humans were stupid and loud and irrational so it only made sense that he disliked their company and why had he come here when he could’ve gone to the Vulcan Science Academy and been around people who made  _sense_  and knew how to shield and didn’t look at him with eyes so breathtakingly hopeful and open and vulnerable that they had him suggesting a bond—a marriage—for the most unacceptable of reasons.

He would be feeling none of this if it wasn’t for Jim Kirk and his illogical human eyes. His face had been so fragile, so close to devastation when Spock told him he couldn’t adopt Saavik. His eyes had been equal parts fear and determination at the possibility. Spock had been amazed that so much emotion, so complex and conflicting, could be held in something so simple as a creature’s eyes.

His simple phrase.  _But I promised._

Spock considered leaving his station in favor of the ship’s gym. He could spar with someone, some people, perhaps a security team. It would relieve him of this bodily tension. But he knew that any strenuous physical exertion would almost certainly result in a fainting spell. Not to mention that leaving in the middle of a shift was against regulation.

And then even though he was sitting suddenly the world was spinning, darkening, narrowing, tilting and he was on the ground.

* * *

 

When he came to, Dr. McCoy was standing over him in sickbay, expression dry and unimpressed. “Y’all are stupid,” he said simply.

“Thank you for your input, doctor,” Spock replied, equally dry.

Jim was in the biobed next to him, just waking up. “You two collapsed simultaneously. Raised more of a fuss than a fox in the henhouse, makin’ everyone worry like that. M’Benga says it was that weird Vulcan voodoo messing with your heads.”

“The Vulcan mind practices bear almost no resemblance at all to the Earth religion of voodooism, doctor, a fact of which I have informed you before.”

“Wha’s going on?” Jim slurred, yawning.

“You passed out,” McCoy said.

“It was the result of the blocked bond,” M’Benga explained. “Shielding a full marital bond is massively unhealthy, both mentally and physically. It’s a miracle you both held out as long as you did. I believe that Jim passed out on his own, and Spock felt the danger to his spouse through the bond. Not everything can be blocked. In his already weakened state, the sensation was enough to trigger a mirror reaction.”

“Wait,” Jim said. “Slow down. What happened?”

“Spock here has been shielding himself from you the entire goddamn time,” McCoy said gruffly. “But since you’re bondmates now, that tricked your brain into thinking a part of itself was missing, and you got a whole mess o’ psychosomatic symptoms. Restlessness, lack of appetite, trouble sleeping, irritability, lightheadedness, the works.” Bones looked him in the eye. “Something that you  _could_  have told me about.”

Jim ignored him and turned to Spock. “Did you know the shielding was causing this?”

“It was the logical conclusion, given the time correlation,” he said.

“If you knew it was hurting you—knew it was hurting both of us—then why’d you keep doing it? Why not stop?”

“I did not anticipate the symptoms progressing to this point. I considered them a minor discomfort in exchange for protecting the privacy of our own minds.”

“If you do not stop shielding permanently, both of you will be dead within two and a half months. Your symptoms will only continue to worsen from here on out,” M’Benga said.

Spock nodded and lowered his shields.

Their minds rushed together in a rainbow of color, in a blaze. Brilliance on brilliance and perfectly complimentary, shining and glowing and burning, scorching through each other like fire. Spock might’ve gasped. It was like touching the sun.

The intense sensation abated, but not fully, it merely settled to a bearable level. There was a newfound warmth in his mind, filling a hole he hadn’t known existed until the bond. It was like a physical thing, like he could reach out and touch it in the air between their minds.

It was strong. Stronger than was normal. Blocking it had drained them faster than was normal, even for another marital bond. Spock had successfully shielded his betrothal bond to T’Pring for years. Admittedly, that had been a different situation—the shielding a result of the combined efforts of two trained telepaths. It had only been a preliminary bond in the first place, barely felt even when unblocked. It had been easy to shield. Their minds had only been just barely compatible enough to allow the bond to form.

This—this was different.

The bond was strong and deep and ran between every neuron in their heads. They were tied in the fullest way possible; it almost felt like they could never possibly be untied, but Spock knew that to be untrue. It almost felt like—well. He wouldn’t think that. It was unlikely to the point of absurdity.

The captain’s mind was a warm pool of sunlight that he thought he wouldn’t mind drowning in. It was dynamic—constantly moving, flitting, at a million miles an hour and forming connections most people would never dream of.

Brilliant. He was truly brilliant, in every sense of the word. And now Spock could feel that brilliance as easily as he could see this room.

“Whoa,” Jim said, and Spock found that he quite agreed with the sentiment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I scare you guys with that first sentence


	9. Meditation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vulcan words and info come from the Vulcan Language Dictionary, which is super helpful and great

The bond felt less intense after the initial shock wore off. It was just the sudden gush of sensation hitting them all at once that had been overwhelming. It faded into this constant awareness—a presence—sitting in the back of their minds and giving the occasional tug.

Jim could hear Spock’s thoughts, if he focused on them. He was grateful to find that they weren’t all that distracting. It was like a low level hum of background noise, and somehow it seemed comforting, just knowing it was there. It would be awfully inconvenient if it was a constant struggle to hear himself think the whole time they were married.

He was also pretty sure he was getting impressions of muted, quickly-repressed emotions, and that was a bit troubling. The bond worked both ways. If he was getting faint glimpses of emotion, then Spock was probably feeling his full-on, and that had to overwhelming for the poor guy. 

He hadn’t realized the bond would be this… full. He was expecting a heightened awareness, sure, but he didn’t know how much. Thank god it was limited to surface stuff, as far as he knew. He trusted Spock, don’t get him wrong, but there were some things he didn’t want anybody seeing. He hoped and prayed to every deity there was that as long as he didn’t think about it, Spock would be unaware.

* * *

 

The light of the transporter beam swirled around them in spinning halos. They materialized, and Jim called out, “Alright, people, let’s get this geological survey underway. This planet doesn’t have any sapient life so it should be safe, but if you get so much as an inkling, even a gut feeling, that that isn’t true—comm me immediately.”

He was new into his command, but he was starting to pick up on a pattern when it came to supposedly simple missions on supposedly uninhabited planets. Let it never be said that sailors (even space sailors) weren’t superstitious; the fear of jinxing a mission was worse than the fear of any actual danger they faced. Saying ‘what could go wrong?’ got as bad a reaction as accusations of treason, and in the crew’s eyes they were practically the same thing.

The planet they had beamed down to was covered in lush foliage, most of it orange, smattered with some blue and red and purple here and there. The air was thick as a blanket, practically smothering.

The planet had no trees, technically, but it did have bushes and hedges that grew 30-50 feet high, dripping with flowers bigger than their heads. Monkey-like creatures and gigantic birds flitted between the branches with ease, making a lot of sound as they went. The ‘forest’ was filled with constant buzzing and humming and chirping. The greater levels of oxygen in the atmosphere meant scaled-up insects; Jim spotted a beetle more than a foot long within three seconds.

A wave of curiosity hit him like a tsunami. A hunger to know as deep and real and potent as a hunger for food. It raked through him thoroughly, and his head snapped up to find Spock.

The feeling wasn’t his own.

A smile broke out on his face, uncontrollable. His glee must have slipped through the bond, because his Chief Science Officer turned and asked “Captain?”

“Nothing,” he said, still smiling. “I just love this place.”

“I too find it fascinating,” Spock said. Jim grinned even wider at what he now recognized as an emotional expression.

In that moment he was sure of two things:

  1. Curiosity was definitely 10,000% an emotion, and
  2. He wouldn’t tell Spock that for a million credits.

* * *




“Why do they call you Captain Kirk?” Saavik asked as they walked through the halls. Several crewmen had greeted him as such.

“Because that’s my name,” he said. “My last name, I mean. Humans generally have two—the first is for friends and people you like to use, and the second is for everyone else. They’re sorta like how Vulcan clan names work, I think.” He wished he knew if Romulan names worked the same way. Their linguistic similarities made it likely, but still, he didn’t know.

A thought struck him. “I guess Kirk is your last name now too. Huh. Saavik Kirk.”

“Saavik Kirk,” she repeated, trying it out. “So if someone isn’t my friend…”

“They would call you little Miss Kirk,” Jim said, fondly ruffling her curls.

They approached their destination, and Saavik’s pace slowed considerably. She stopped walking altogether a few feet from the door, planting herself firmly on the ground.

“Saavik,” he stopped, turning toward her. “Sweetie. Is something wrong?”

She shook her head. “Don’t wanna.”

“Don’t wanna what?”

Her eyes flicked to the door but she said nothing. Jim sighed, crouching down on the ground next to her. “Spock isn’t that bad a guy,” he said. “He’s actually pretty decent, once you get to know him.”

No response.

“Tell you what. What if I stay with you for the lesson? Would that make it better?”

She said nothing, but her eyes lifted up and met his, hopeful. Jim grinned. “That’s great! Come on, then.”

Once inside the room, Jim quietly dismissed the Caitian who would have served as the emotional monitor. Spock raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t comment.

Maybe it was a Vulcan thing.

Spock set out two meditation mats facing each other with a fire pot between them. He pulled out two large, relatively flat rocks and set one on each mat at the farthest end. He sat on one of them in what looked like the human lotus position.

“Today you will be learning wh’ltri,” he said. “It is the simplest form of meditation. The way I am sitting is the loshirak—the open position. I ask that you mimic it.”

Saavik silently went over to the rock and sat on it, pulling her legs crossed and laying her palms open, upward on her knees. Perfect on the first try. She was observant.

“Meditation is when one trains, calms, or empties their mind and achieves an altered state. It is the act of thinking intently and at length for spiritual purposes,” he said. “Meditation will grant you tvi-sochya—loosely translated as inner peace. Above that is s’thaupi, the beyond state. It is unlikely you will reach either in your first few lessons. In time, you will master enok-ka-fi, which will allow you to censor out pain completely when the need arises.”

Her gaze got weirdly intent. “How much time?”

“Enok-ka-fi contains two phases. Most children begin meditation instruction at the age of three and reach the second phase, the an-prele, between sixteen and nineteen. It is typically taught by a counsellor adept, and involves lobe segregation of the brain and a study of Surak’s Essays in Discipline.”

Saavik frowned at that, and Jim made a mental note to ask her later why she had such a keen interest in pain management. She might need medical attention and not realize that was an option, though he had a suspicion that wasn’t the case. It sounded more like she wanted… insurance.

And he had a feeling explaining that he no longer needed to worry about that would be a very long process and not go over well.

Spock instructed her in various breathing techniques and how to order her thoughts after she entered a meditative state. They began the process, and the room began very, very still. 

Turns out watching Vulcans meditate is even more boring than it sounds. Jim dozed off after the first hour.

* * *

 

Spock came out of it sleepily but alert, as always. He blinked and glanced over to his bondmate, who was snoring lightly in a chair nearby.

“Saavik,” he spoke quietly, rousing her from her trance. Her eyes fluttered open but she stayed fixed in the meditative position.

“It is time to reinforce your shields,” he said. “Then we are done for the day.”

She unfurled herself and came over to sit on his meditation mat with him. He raised a hand to her meld points and brushed their minds together.

She was relaxed, calmer than she had ever been with him, possibly calmer than ever, period. Her mind was soothed and quiet, still keen but not racing. Sluggish tiredness poured through it, and he knew she was going to sleep for hours once she left here.

Tentatively, she poked at his mind as if to look through it and he rebuked her, putting a light shield up until she backed off. He began building up her own shields. They were at the point where she was doing the majority of the work and Spock was merely assisting. Soon she would be able to shield entirely on her own. 

He finished the construction and handed Saavik off to a now-awake Jim, who said he was going to drop the child off in her bed for a nap and then invited Spock to join him for chess later.

* * *

 

“Check,” Jim smirked. Spock did not frown and moved his king to safety. For the eighth time that game.

“So,” Jim said, twirling his bishop in his hand before placing it seemingly at random. “You haven’t been sleeping. Not since that first night. You’ve been avoiding it.”

“That is not a deduction you are logically capable of making. Vulcans require less sleep than humans. It makes sense that I would go to bed later and rise earlier than you, creating the illusion that I am not sleeping.”

“Spock, I’m not stupid. I’d know if you were in the bed with me, and you haven’t been. And just because you can go weeks without sleep doesn’t mean you should or that it’s healthy.” God, he sounded like Bones now.

“Captain, I am not lying when I say that Vulcans req—“

“No, but you’re implying. We’re bonded now Spock, I can feel how tired you are,” he said. “From now on, I won’t sleep in the bed unless you do.”

It only takes seven days of total sleep deprivation to kill a human. The captain’s body would collapse and force rest long before it reached that point, however. He likely meant that he intended to sleep on the couch, which would not be as comfortable or restful as the bed. The result would be muscle pain and mild but increasing sleep deprivation.

Humans were so so fragile and they needed sleep so they didn’t break down. Lack of it inhibited reflexes and decision-making skills. With Jim as captain of a starship, allowing that to happen would endanger lives.

“I do not recommend this course of action,” he said.

“Tough.”

They stared at each other over the chessboard. Spock moved his rook. “I will remain in the bed for eight hours tonight, on the condition that you are there for the same length of time. Is that satisfactory?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Jim preened, capturing his queen with his knight. Spock’s attention riveted back to the board in shock, and Jim laughed.

Just then, Saavik entered the room through the adjoining bathroom. She froze when she caught sight of Spock.

“What is he doing here?” she asked Jim in a loud whisper from across the room.

“He lives here, same as I do,” he said. “We’re playing chess. Do you want to watch?”

She hesitated, then cautiously approached and came to sit on Jim’s lap. The game continued, pieces slowly being captured and the board thinning, until

“Checkmate!” Jim yelled, tipping over Spock’s king.

“What’s that mean?” Saavik asked.

“That means I win,” he said. She smiled, and stuck her tongue out at Spock, who just looked all the more confused. Jim laughed until his chest ached.


	10. Alternate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the obligatory TOS chapter. It contains light mentions of bullying, transphobia if you squint, violence, and murder. It also isn't relevant to the plot at all and can be skipped entirely.

In another universe…

* * *

 

_The Vulcan High Council considers the children a private matter and elects to handle their rescue internally, without asking for Federation aid. After all, they have the resources. Spock was quietly drafted into the mission, as the only Vulcan hybrid alive with appropriate experience in the field._

_The exfiltration team moves stealthily throughout the compound. They scan the containment rooms for traps, then break down the doors and enter en masse._

_A child’s scream pierces the air._

_“Cease your emotional display,” the team leader commands. “We are here to help."_

_Terrified, the girl complies._

* * *

 

_Spock approaches Saavik in the ship’s sickbay. “You have refused DNA testing to determine who your closest living relatives are. Please explain why.”_

_Saavik doesn’t meet his eyes when she answers. “I don’t wanna go live with strangers.”_

_“You must,” he said. He was reluctant to point out the obvious—she had no one she knew to turn to. She was alone._

_She cringed and curled in on herself further._

_Spock felt an unfamiliar emotion. Something about the child reminded him of himself when he was young. A hybrid, and so alone, so painfully alone. The world was not kind to such ones._

_He decided he would force it to be._

* * *

 

_“This is unexpected of you, commander,” one of the elders said. “We were well aware that Ambassador Sarek’s half-human son had fled Vulcan to be among his own people, but it was unanticipated that even a half-breed would be so traitorous.”_

_Spock opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. His throat and side felt weirdly tight. He attempted to force his pulse to slow._

_“The— the record of this conversation,” he swallowed, finding his words, “would be incriminating—“_

_“It will be handled,” the elder said dryly, making it obvious that she heard the distasteful emotion in Spock’s voice. “Is that all, son of Sarek?”_

_Unable to reply, he merely nodded._

* * *

 

_“Please, Mother. I am asking you to do this as a favor to me,” he said to the vidscreen._

_“That’s one hell of a favor, Spock,” she sucked in a breath. “I’m an old woman now. A six year old? I…”_

_“She has nowhere else to go.”_

_“There’s foster care. With young parents, who can keep up with her, and are at a stage in their life where they_ want _kids,” she suggested._

_“If it makes her more appealing to you, perhaps you should think of Saavik as a grandchild of sorts.”_

_She sighed. “That’s not what I meant, Spock.”_

_Quiet hung heavy between them and across the comlink._

_“I am asking this because I am… concerned about the potential treatment Saavik will receive as a hybrid. I estimated there was no one on the planet better suited to raising her than one who had already raised a hybrid child with such grace and delicacy.”_

_His mother’s eyes softened. “Spock…” she sighed. “Okay. I can’t say no to that. She can come live with your father and I.”_

* * *

 

_“A new student who recently enrolled in this school will be joining us today,” the instructor said. “It is proper that he be introduced formally to his peer group. This is Saavik, son of… of the House of Sarek.”_

_“It’s ‘daughter of’,” Saavik corrected._

_The instructor raised an eyebrow imperiously, just the slightest hint of judgment seeping through her features. Saavik completely missed it—would’ve written it off as a minor reaction even if she hadn’t._

_But her classmates didn’t._

* * *

 

_Saavik was nine when she came home with a sheet of paper taped to her back._

_Amanda gasped and snatched it off her back in an instant. Saavik caught sight of the word “kre’nath” before the paper was crumpled up and thrown in the incinerator._

_“What? What does that mean? What’s a kre’nath?” she asked._

_Amanda pursed her lips. “Please don’t use that word, Saavik. It’s not polite. Just… let’s just forget this ever happened, alright?”_

_She would be calling the school about this later, but as the proverbs said, there is no offense where none is taken. If Saavik didn’t realize she had been insulted, it was like it never happened._

_Saavik narrowed her eyes and resolved to ask Sarek the second she got a chance._

* * *

 

_“What does kre’nath mean?”_

_Sarek set the padd he was working on down abruptly. “That sort of language will not be tolerated in my household.”_

_“Why? What’s it mean?”_

_“The translation is not as potent in Romulan. It means bastard or illegitimate child. Literally translated, it means shamed one,” he said. “Where did you hear that word?”_

_“Nowhere,” Saavik turned back to her homework abruptly._

_Her classmates had forgotten one thing. Vulcans may be pacifists, but Romulans were a warrior people. A plan for vengeance was already forming in her head._

* * *

 

_Saavik was twelve when she saw the fight happening. It involved three girls from her class, one of them significantly smaller and a bit chubbier than the others. Two against one, ganging up on the short kid._

_“Hey,” she said. “Your fight is unfair.”_

_The two bullies paused, one of them clutching the girl by her schooldress collar, fist raised to strike. “Do you intend to do something about it?”_

_Saavik’s eyes glinted and she grinned her sharp warrior’s smirk, knowing how much it unsettled her classmates. She marched over purposefully._

* * *

 

_“Thank you,” the girl she had rescued said. “My name is T’Byn.”_

_“I am Saavik.” She wiped blood away from her nose._

* * *

 

_She was fourteen when she strode into her foster father’s office with determination in her eyes and fire in her heart._

_“I wish to break my betrothal bond,” she said._

_As Sarek was Vulcan, he did not put his head in his hands. “Is this similar in reasoning to your refusal to wear your hair in any acceptable Vulcan fashion? Koon-ut-kal-if-fee is a serious matter, and teenage rebellion has no place in it. A bond can only be broken without battle if you have compelling reasons.”_

_“I have legitimate reasons. However, I should not need a 'good reason' to get out of such a trap. The bonding rites are archaic, and I refuse to have anything to do with them. I will be no man’s chattle.”_

_“If you refuse to provide satisfactory reasons, you will have to battle Selar.” Sarek suppressed the thrill of fear that ran through him at the prospect. Political protest was not considered a good enough reason. Acceptable reasons were things such as a preference for a different gender, a deep affection for one not your betrothed, or a growing mental incompatibility as the children aged and their personalities grew more concrete._

_Lately, many girls had been choosing kal-if-fee with no intention of marrying their champion. They would choose champions who had no desire for them, or had mates of their own, and would set them free. Some even declared themselves their own champion._

_It was being called T’Pring’s Revolution._

_The movement was chaos and anarchy and it went against every tenet of logic and order and_ tradition _that made the framework of Vulcan society. It was needless bloodshed when there could be unity. It was a disruption of harmony for the sake of proving a point._

_Sarek could not publicly voice support for it. It would be political suicide. As opposed to actual suicide, which was sometimes the de facto result for girls who fought for themselves._

_“I am prepared. I will kill Selar and win my own hand.”_

_And Sarek knew she would._

* * *

 

_“I am joining Starfleet.”_

_Vulcans do not cry._

“No,” _he said emphatically._

_“It is not your decision to make.”_

_“Please do not,” he amended._

_“Why not? Spock joined Starfleet. So did Michael,” she said._

_“Starfleet is a violent military organization that has stolen them both from me,” he said tightly. He knows it is illogical, but he really, truly hates Starfleet._

_“Spock is out there saving lives every day. I want to do the same,” she said._

_Sarek leveled his gaze at her. “Nothing will change your mind, will it?”_

_“No.”_

* * *

 

_She wasn’t sure if there were any other Vulcans currently enrolled, but she was definitely the only Romulan to have ever been accepted into the Academy._

_Her roommate was a human with the warmest brown eyes and hair kept in elaborate braids. She was engineering track to Saavik’s command track. Despite the difference of majors, they had quite a few classes together._

_And those classes were a competition. They were both always the top and second-best student in class, both vying to hold their position or knock the other back. Mariah did better in math and science classes, Saavik did better in ethics and self-defense._

_Despite the competition, they remained each other’s favorite study and sparring partner and were inseparable best friends. There was hardly a moment when you found one without the other._

_They were the talk of the whole damn school._

* * *

 

_Her Kobayashi Maru ended with most of the bridge crew dead, the ship in the Neutral Zone in violation of treaty, surrounded by three Klingon vessels and about to be boarded. She had to order the crew to abandon ship. It was unlikely that many could in time._

_The doors to the sim swooshed open and Kirk walked in, shrouded in light._

_“Any suggestions, Admiral?” she asked._

_“Prayer, Mr. Saavik. The Klingons don’t take prisoners.”_

_The simulation ended, lights flicking on and the bridge crew rising from their dramatic ‘dead’ positions. She stood frozen at the center of it all, unwilling or unable to move._

_“Well, Mr. Saavik, are you gonna stay with the sinking ship?” the Admiral asked her._

_“Permission to speak candidly, sir?”_

_“Granted.”_

_“I don’t believe this was a fair test of my command abilities.”_

_“And why not?”_

_“Because there was no way to win.”_

_“A no-win situation is a possibility every commander may face. Has that never occurred to you?” Kirk asked._

_“No, sir. It has not.”_

_The lieutenant reminded him almost startlingly of himself at that age. Young and inexperienced and sure that he could take on the entire galaxy and win—that it would never take something from him, that death would never touch a member of his crew, that he wouldn’t feel the weight of every redshirt stained redder with blood on his conscience._

_If there’s one thing Kirk has learned over the years it’s that you can’t save everyone._

_“How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn’t you say?” he asked._

_She remained looking straight ahead and stoic. “As I indicated, Admiral, that thought had not occurred to me.”_

_“Well, now you have something new to think about. Carry on._ _"_

_And so she did._

* * *

 

_“All moorings are cleared, Captain,” she said._

_“Thank you,” Spock replied. She was grateful to be serving under his command. She rarely got to see him growing up, and she had always admired the man deeply. He had been her inspiration for joining Starfleet in the first place, to be honest._

_He had saved her life. He was essentially her foster brother, despite being old enough to be her father. Of course she looked up to him._

_Spock seemed to pause and consider something. “Lieutenant,” he said. “Have you ever piloted a starship out of spacedock?”_

_“Never, sir,” she said, tamping down on her excitement._

_The admiral and his doctor friend shared a somewhat distressed glance at the entrance to the bridge. Spock caught sight of it, pointedly ignored it, and got up from the captain’s chair. “Take her out, Mr. Saavik.”_

_Saavik blinked and swallowed. This felt unreal. She had grown up hearing Spock’s stories of the amazing, beloved Captain Kirk and now she was going to take the helm of the Enterprise for the first time with both of them watching. She looked to him and steadied herself._

_“Aye sir,” she managed, striding to the captain’s chair past the admiral, who now looked very, very distressed._

_“For everything there is a first time, Lieutenant,” Spock said. “Don’t you agree, Admiral?”_

_“Mhmm,” Kirk replied weakly._

_“Aft thrusters, Mr. Sulu,” she said._

_“Aft thrusters.”_

_“Would you like a tranquilizer?” the doctor asked Kirk, who shook his head. Saavik ignored the perceived insult._

_“Ahead one quarter impulse power,” she said. And she drove the Enterprise out of dock._


	11. Experiment

The data:

  1. Spock is scary. 
  2. Jim says Spock isn’t a bad person. 
  3. Saavik trusts Jim. 
  4. He didn’t do anything too bad during chess yesterday. 
  5. He taught her how to meditate, which she likes. 



The hypothesis: 

Spock might not be as scary as he seems.

The methodology: 

Jim says Spock isn’t so bad once you get to know him. Thus, Saavik will get to know him and determine whether or not this is true. This will also confirm whether Jim can be trusted or not.

The experiment:

Saavik waits until their mental training session to act, but she observes him throughout the day. It’s fairly easy to do. He’s with Jim a lot.

He’s with Jim more than Saavik is. She does not like that.

She spends the day on the bridge, swishing her legs around in a spinny chair someone brought up and doodling her observations.

Spock has a grumpy face. All the time. But it’s not grumpy like the doctor grumpy, it’s grumpy like the way the head moderator would go very quiet when she failed a test.

Saavik didn’t like it.

She drew his grumpy face.

People kept smiling at her and asking what she was doing, to which she would quickly reply “Science” and hide her sketch padd.

“You know, Spock’s doing science too. Maybe you should go talk to him,” Ms. Uhura whispered conspiratorily.

Saavik raised both eyebrows high and hopped off her spinny chair. She shyly approached the science station. Spock stopped what he was doing.

“May I help you?”

“Uhura-an said you do science.”

“That is true.”

Just like they had. Saavik scribbled some nonsensical symbols down on her padd as if they were actual words. They had always taken notes like that.

Spock appeared amused by this. “Are you ‘doing science’ as well?”

“I’m conducting an ‘speariment.”

“Experiment?” 

“That’s what I said.”

“And what is your experiment on?”

“You.”

He blinked. “What are you testing about me?”

“How evil you are.”

“If I may have some input?” he said. “I am not evil.”

“We’ll see.”

* * *

 

Lieutenant Radha was supervising their session today. Jim and Spock called her an emotional monitor, even though she was clearly a moderator. A moderator who didn’t take notes, though. She was reading a book instead.

Spock lectured Saavik for forty-five minutes on how to use meditation to achieve emotional control before he finally melded with her. He intended to help put her shields up, but she didn’t give him the chance.

She barreled into his mind with the force of a steamroller before he had a second to react. She was probing, searching, rooting around carelessly. If his mind had been a room, it would have been ransacked. The invasion was fast and burning and painful.

She was rifling through his memories.

_He is seven years old and wandering the desert during his kahs-wan, afraid to stop, afraid to sleep, desperate and hungry and thirsty but if he stops moving he won’t be able to start up again and it’s just a little while longer—_

_He is sipping sash-savas tea with his mother after he came home sniffling and bleeding and she cleaned the cuts—_

_He is running through the halls with Sybok and he knows pretending to be a pirate is illogical but he can’t bring himself to care—_

_He is pouring hour after hour of free time into study because he has to be the best because they expect him to be the worst—_

_He is opening his acceptance letter to the Vulcan Science Academy but he does not feel the illogical thrill he got opening the Starfleet one—_

_He is walking through the Academy on his first day and ignoring his classmates’ stares and dropped conversations, reminding himself that he chose this, he chose to be here—_

_He is choking Jim against a console on the bridge for daring to say anything about Amanda goddamn Grayson_ _, and he will be the last person to ever use her against him in that way—_

Saavik gasps and flinches out of the meld, severing it roughly, unsafely.

For a moment they just stared at each other. Spock’s head was throbbing and thought was beyond him. He was glad he was sitting.

Then Saavik ran out of the room.

* * *

 

“Jim!” she yelled, throwing her arms around him.

“Whoa! What’s this all about?” he asked, grinning. Then he caught sight of her expression. “What happened?”

“Spock tried to kill you!”

“He told you about that?” What a dumb idea. He had to know Saavik already didn’t trust him. Admitting that he once tried to murder her adoptive father couldn’t possibly have helped in that regard. “Well, that was a long time ago. And he apologized. Plus I don’t know if Spock told you this, but I started it. I was  _trying_  to get him to kill me.”

She pulled back and looked up at him with wide, hurt eyes. “What?”

Oh God he shouldn’t have said that. He should have said literally anything but that.

“Well, um… You see, it was for a mission. I was trying to make him angry, because if he got angry, then I got to be captain instead of him. So I said some mean things about him, about his mom, to… Anyway. It wasn’t his fault. You shouldn’t blame Spock for that.”

That was confusing. Spock tried to kill Jim but it was Jim’s fault and she shouldn’t blame Spock? For murder? Of Jim, who is the goodest person she has met?

It didn’t make sense. It did sorta, but she didn’t like it. It would be better if it was Spock’s fault. Then her experiment would be very decisively concluded and she could say for certain that Spock was evil.

* * *

 

“Captain, I must speak with you.”

“Sure, what is it?” he asked without looking up from the padd he was signing off on.

“It is about Saavik.”

“Right…” he said. “Meet me in my ready room?”

They left the rec room in unison and headed to the more private room to talk. Jim sat down in a chair and waited for Spock to begin.

“I am concerned about her mental state.”

That wasn’t what he had been expecting. “What do you mean?”

“Today she intruded upon my mind during a demonstrative meld. She examined several memories before I was able to react and stop her. She ended up stopping herself when she came upon a memory that caused her distress.”

So that was how she found out. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah. That’s not okay. I’ll make sure to talk to her about that. I’m sorry she did that. God. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“I did not bring the subject up to seek out an apology,” he said. “Saavik also spent several hours on the bridge this morning pretending to be a scientist. I believe she is in need of a psychiatric evaluation.”

“Spock, no, that’s just a kid thing. They like to play make believe. It helps them figure out what they like, what they wanna be like as a grown-up.”

“You misunderstand,” he said. “Young children with post-traumatic stress disorder often reenact their trauma through play, and do not get any enjoyment out of it. Additionally, if they have been sexually abused, they often engage in inappropriate sexual behavior. I believe this is an apt parallel to how Saavik’s mental boundaries were treated, and how she regards those boundaries now.”

“Oh,” Jim said. “Oh.”

* * *

 

Dr. Singh confirmed that Saavik did have PTSD. She would be seeing her twice a week for therapy sessions. McCoy was more than qualified to act as her psychiatrist should the need arise.

Dr. Singh gave them a list of things to look out for, ways they could help, coping skills, told them what to expect. PTSD presents differently in especially young children than it does in adults—it’s not all flashbacks and memory gaps. Children tend to think there are predictable signs that something traumatic is about to happen, and incorporate past traumas into their daily lives. A child who witnessed a school shooting might take an interest in shooting games or bring a gun to school, for example.

They were told to potentially prepare themselves for anxiety, sadness, anger, trust issues, and self-esteem issues. Saavik might be overly aggressive and engage in self-destructive behaviors.

They took her back to her quarters and settled her into bed. Just as they were leaving, she stopped them by asking in a tiny voice, “Jim?” 

“Yes, sweetheart? What is it?”

“Can you…” she looked down at her blanket, fiddling with its corner. “Can you stay for a while?”

His heart melted. “Of course. Tell you what, how about I read you a story to put you to sleep, how about that?”

Spock excused himself, and Jim went to his quarters real quick to try and find something suitable to read. He had a whole collection of antique paper books on a shelf, some of them first editions. It was what he spent the majority of his credits on.

Ah, there it was. A collection of fairy tales, the real versions. Some of them had some dark parts, but it was nothing Saavik couldn’t handle.

He chose one of the longer tales in the book to read—the story of The Light Princess. The girl who gravity didn’t apply to, the one the world literally couldn’t keep down.

He returned to Saavik’s room and pulled up a chair next to her bed, settling down in it. “Once upon a time…”

* * *

 

Jim woke up the next morning embarrassingly tangled around Spock, who—just to make matters worse—was already awake.

“Shit,” Jim hissed, scrambling away. “Sorry. So sorry about that. I didn’t mean to—sorry.”

“You have no need to apologize,” Spock said.

“Yes I do, I was totally up in your personal space, and I know Vulcans are wei—uh, value that.”

“That is true. However, I expected as much while sleeping with such a tactile species. And these quarters are colder than I am used to. I find the addition of your body heat helps mollify the effects.”

“Do you need me to turn the temperature up?” Jim asked, frowning. It was already up five degrees as a compromise.

“No. I am fine. The temperature is adequate,” he said. “What would you like for breakfast?”

“Uh, what?”

“Are there any particular food items you would prefer to eat for the morning meal?” he clarified.

“Uh, pancakes I guess? Why?”

Spock extricated himself from the bed with annoying grace. He seemed almost feline, and that was just wrong this early in the morning, especially since Jim was still groggy and sleep-addled. “I shall make them for you.”

“Oh, Spock, you don’t have to do that—“

“It is the Vulcan custom to prepare a meal for the host when one is a guest. Please, it is no trouble.”

Well, who was Jim to step all over the guy’s culture? Besides, it was just punching something in to a replicator.

Or so he thought. But as he watched, Spock replicated not pancakes but separate ingredients, pulling up a recipe on a padd and taking foodstuffs into the little kitchenette that Jim literally never used because why would he when he could just replicate fully prepared meals instead?

“You know, you didn’t have to stay in bed with me. After you woke up, I mean.”

Spock had awoken after 4.31 hours of sleep and 0.27 hours of attempting to achieve that state, which totaled to only 57.25% of the promised eight hours of rest he would spend in bed each night. Humans required twice that. “I estimated that my doing so would wake you up and result in loss of sleep on your part. I agreed to stay in the bed for eight hours, or as long as you do. I intend to uphold my end of the agreement.”

Jim frowned. “I’m not a little kid. I can handle getting woken up. You don’t need to look out for me in that way.”

Spock levelled his gaze. “I know.”

Jim’s frown deepened because what the hell did that mean?

Saavik ambled into their quarters, sparing her usual wary glance towards Spock. She paused when she noticed his unusual activity.

“Jim,” she whispered, still way too loud to actually be private. “What’s he doing?”

“Making pancakes,” Jim said in an equally loud mock-whisper. Spock looked vaguely bemused from where he was pretending not to hear.

Jim had sort of been hoping—most illogically, he knew—that Spock would be a terrible cook, mostly because nobody should be that good at that many things. It just wasn’t fair. But no. He followed the recipe with scientific precision, measuring out ingredients with hilarious exactness. Jim could almost hear him mumbling about chemical reactions when he set the batter to fry on the stove.

Then he realized he really could hear him and those were his thoughts.

They all three sat down to eat at the table usually used just for chess, Jim pulling up an extra chair from his work desk. The meal was quiet, subdued, but not awkward. Saavik kept sneaking glances at Spock when she thought no one was looking. It was like she was trying to figure him out, like he was a puzzle she was seconds away from cracking.

“I noticed the captain read you a story before bed last night,” he said, hoping it didn’t seem too abrupt. “My mother used to do the same for me. I confess a certain fondness for  _Alice in Wonderland.”_

“Really?!” Saavik asked. He gave a slight nod.

“You know,” Jim said, with an inscrutable expression on his face, “maybe Spock can read to you tonight. That book sounds pretty cool, don’t you think? I even have a copy of it.”

She looked at Spock intently for a moment, then nodded her agreement. Spock almost sighed with relief, and Jim burst out grinning. “That’s great! It’s a date.”

Looking at them both, he couldn’t help but think how they all seemed like a little family. A lopsided and not-quite-together family, but a family nonetheless. Who would have ever thought he would end up like this? Jim Kirk, married and raising a daughter? It was just a green card marriage and it probably technically didn’t count, but still, he had gotten married when no one—least of all himself—had ever thought he would.


	12. Results

Results:

Inconclusive.

She would have to run another trial.

Spock was good at reading bedtime stories. His voice was low and soothing, calmly even and regular. He had managed to very quickly lull her to sleep.

Jim was still better at it, though. He did the voices right, and the story seemed more alive and real with him. When Spock told it, it was flat.

She wasn’t allowed to do the thing with the meld again, which was very inconvenient. She had told them both that she always did that in melds, everyone did, except for Spock ‘cause he was weird about them. But they didn’t listen to her.

She was limited to sensory observation only, then. It definitely wasn’t how she normally got to know people, but she was smart and she could make it work.

Jim told her that humans usually talked to get to know each other. She wasn’t very good at that, though. That could be Plan C.

* * *

 

Jim gets kidnapped a lot. It happens. He is the captain of a starship, after all. For as many planets as there are in the Federation, there are even more who are  _not_  in it, and don’t like the idea of such a gigantic power bloc. Jim is somehow an authority figure, and thus becomes the face of everything they despise.

There are a lot of people who would give anything to have a starship captain to take their anger out on. The youngest, most famous one in the ‘Fleet is quite a prize.

Spock does not like it.

As the good doctor put it, Jim had a mouth on him and often ended up making the situation worse than it had to be. He frequently managed to annoy his torturers into torturing him worse than they had intended.

And then they underestimated him and he pulled off what he called his daring escape but what Spock called needlessly risky stunts that could have easily resulted in death or dismemberment.

He was, frankly, sick of it. As was Dr. McCoy. And Scotty. And Sulu and Uhura and Chekov. And anyone who had ever seen the captain in sickbay recovering from one of these incidents. The entire medical staff. All of security. The whole crew, essentially. Everyone was sick of it.

But mostly Spock. Spock was sick of it  _more._

* * *

 

Saavik was hanging out on the bridge again (which wasn’t against any regs, Jim’d had Spock check) when she first got a taste of this.

“Ship passing at bearing 387 mark 12, medium range,” Sulu said. “Unknown origin, traveling at one eighth space normal speed.”

“Captain, we are being scanned,” Spock reported.

“Ship’s bearing has changed to an intercept course,” Sulu said.

“They are attempting to hail us, Captain,” Uhura said.

“Put it onscreen, Lieutenant,” he said. She did. The vidscreen flicked from stars to the inside of a spaceship with startling clarity. Short, frail-looking humanoids with bright pink skin and black, multi-faceted eyes like an insect’s stared back at them.

Suddenly Jim couldn’t move as his molecules locked up and began disintegrating in a way that was totally unlike any transport beam he had ever experienced.

“Captain!”

“Daddy!” Saavik cried out.

He was on the alien ship’s bridge now, and he saw his crew’s shocked faces for half a second before the transmission was cut.

“Take him to the brig.”

* * *

 

The Vaad’krishan, as it turned out, were from a planet that had recently been denied entrance to the Federation because A) they still practiced ritual sacrifice of citizens, and B) they weren’t technically warp capable yet, so the Prime Directive still applied. Spacefaring, yes, obviously, but not past the speed of light.

Though they were clearly capable of interacting with them on their level, and even presenting a menace to society, if Jim’s situation told them anything. It was enough to make you think the specifications of the Directive should be changed, like some fringe political groups lobbied for. But any conflict between them would still be massively unequal—a genocide rather than a fight.

This was interpreted as condescension.

The Vaad’krishan marched him to an old-style cell with actual metal bars and a real, physical lock instead of a force field. Oh, he could pick that in seconds. He just needed five minutes unsupervised and he was home free.

But it didn’t look like that would be happening any time soon, because his two guards had chairs set up chairs to watch him head-on. They attempted to shove him bodily into the cell, but he barely felt it.

It was now or never.

He turned and punched one of them in their fragile little face.

 _“Ow!”_  he jumped back, inadvertently going into the cell. His skin burned where he had touched them, red and raw, peeling back.

The un-punched one cocked his head and turned the key in the lock. “You appear to be allergic to the oils on our skin.”

Of fucking  _course._

* * *

 

Spock moved swiftly into the captain’s chair. “Ms. Uhura, open hailing frequencies.”

She soon had a crystal-clear image of the alien bridge back up on the vidscreen.

“Explain why you have taken our captain,” he said coldly, using the tone of voice that had made cadets cower before him at the Academy.

“Bargaining chip,” the one in charge shrugged. “We want to reopen negotiations with the Federation. That cannot be done without first presenting a gift in blood. But you didn’t like it before when we used our own citizens, so.”

“You intend to use the captain as a human sacrifice?”

“Yes.”

“No!” Saavik yelled. They had mostly forgotten she was there. Scotty moved to escort her off the bridge, but she reacted viscerally and shoved him when he approached. He landed flat on his back several feet away, staring at her in shock.

“I want my dad back!”

“If the identity of the one taken is an issue, we would be happy to exchange him,” the Vaad’krishan said. “Our people are telekinetic by nature. It’s how we move our ship. We need to see something to move it though. Your captain was simply the closest one to the vidscreen.”

“An exchange is not an option,” Spock said. “We will not provide any crewman for you to use as a blood sacrifice, and we demand the safe return of our captain immediately.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” he said apologetically. “These negotiations are simply too important.”

“The Federation does not require you to provide anything in order to engage in diplomatic relations. The sacrifice of a sapient life was part of the reason you were rejected in the first place. Repeating the procedure will not be well received.”

“We will not insult you by foregoing such an important tradition,” he said. “And we will not have our culture and our way of life insulted. This is what we do. The Federation must respect and accept that.”

“They will not. Respect for another’s culture does not extend past the point of needless bloodshed. Cease this imm—

“Needless?  _Needless?!_  You are disrespecting our gift?”

“I hardly see how this is a gift, as people are not goods to be exchanged and in any case you stole the captain from us initially. Returning him is only common courtesy, as well as the law. If you do so now, we will not press charges.”

 _“Press charges?!”_  he shouted. “You know what, offer retracted. I have never encountered such disrespect in my entire life. We will not be exchanging your captain for any other crewmember. He will be slaughtered at 0600 hours. Good day.”

He stabbed a button and the communication ended.

“No! I want my daddy!” Saavik stomped her foot, leaving a slight indentation in the floor.

“Somebody get that kid outta here,” Scotty said.

Sulu approached her, murmuring soft reassurances, and tried to lead her by the arm but she kicked him hard enough to elicit a sharp cry of pain, the man falling and clutching at his ankle, blood starting to seep through the regulation pants and uncontrollable tears falling down his face.

Spock stood abruptly. “Saavik. That was inappropriate. You have injured Sulu-an. You must apologize.”

“No!” she said petulantly, stomping her foot again. This time left a deeper impact. Her little fists were clenched tight enough to draw tiny rivulets of green blood out. “I want my daddy.”

“I will go get him,” Spock said placatingly. “But first you must leave the bridge.”

That gave her pause. “You’ll go get him?”

“I will get him.”

She nodded, slowly, and reached her hands out to him. Spock raised an eyebrow at the gesture, but nevertheless picked her up and carried her out.

* * *

 

Spock ruthlessly and efficiently eliminated all of the threats. He had a computer scientist hack the other ship’s data files, memorized their layout, and shot his way from the nearest safe beam point to the brig. He took a security team of five and ordered their phasers be on stun setting two.

They blasted their way in and quickly decommissioned the two guards. “Spock!” Jim came to stand at the bars of the cell.

Spock amped up the setting on his phaser and Jim took a step back. He fired on the door, completely disintegrating its lock. The metal was searing hot, but thankfully the door swung open on its own. Jim stepped out.

“I could have gotten that,” he said.

“If you were capable of escape, then why did you not do so earlier?”

He sighed. “I tried to overpower the guards, which should have been easy as fuck because look at them, but turns out their skin is corrosive to humans. Or maybe I’m just allergic to it, hell if I know. And they’re telekinetic; every time I got too close to the bars they would throw me back.  _With their minds._ ”

“Are you injured?” he asked.

“It’s nothing. Just some minor burns on my fingers.”

“You must be returned to the Enterprise at once.”

“It’s really nothing, Spock. I’m fine.”

“I believe you,” he said. A pause. “Saavik is concerned for you.”

Shit. “Shit, she was on the bridge, she must be scared out of her mind.”

“She had a minor temper tantrum that resulted in breaking Mr. Sulu’s ankle and doing some damage to the floor of the Enterprise. She does not seem to have full control over her strength.”

“Commander, I realize your both concerned about your daughter, but we should really beam out right about now,” a security ensign said.

Jim felt his face heat. Which didn’t make sense, really. As far as everyone else knew, he and Spock were married and had adopted a little girl together. He couldn’t explain that Saavik was only his daughter without explaining the whole sham marriage thing, which they had agreed only the senior bridge crew would know the truth about.

* * *

 

“Jim!” Saavik rushed him the second he beamed in. Scotty had tried to hold her back until they were at least done transporting, but to no avail. She was off like a shot the second it was clear which stream of glowing molecules would become her father.

He realized with a pang that she had called him ‘daddy’ earlier, for the first time ever.

A mass of six-year-old hit him like a phaser shot, knocking him to the ground with an  _oof._  He laughed, ruffling her hair. “Glad to see you too.”

* * *

 

Spock had rescued Jim when Jim was being gone. Saved his life, even, Jim had said so himself. He had lived up to his word and brought her daddy back.

Saving his life now balanced out a previous attempt to end it, she decided.

Maybe Spock was sort of okay.

That result wasn’t conclusive, of course, and it was still subject to change. Maybe this had been a fluke. She shouldn’t assume anything from just one trial, she knew better than that, you always had to do it more than once. New data could still present itself. Spock could try to kill Jim again. If he did that, he was a bad person, and nothing would be able to change Saavik’s mind about it.

But for now he could be trusted. Tentatively. Somewhat. On a temporary basis.

It was only because he read good bedtime stories.


	13. Deneva, or Adoption Part Two

The mission to Deneva was a simple supply run, delivering medicine to fill hypos with and programmable matter to refill the replicators. And maybe Jim always took supply runs a bit more seriously than other captains did, but the crew was used to it, and so when he asked Spock to beam down to the surface with him, he didn’t question it and merely agreed.

It was one thing to speak with officials running the place and hear that everything was fine, but Jim always made it a point to find a regular citizen and ask  _them_  how things were going. He usually preferred someone without many connections, or a child who would be brutally honest. Just because things were rosy at the top didn’t mean the regular people were doing well. The true mark of a society is how it treats its poorest, most vulnerable members.

But Sam knew him well enough to understand this and that made his word golden.

“Jim!”

“Sam!”

The two men embraced in a long hug where Jim had beamed down to Sam’s front door.

“God, it’s been too long, little brother. This is the first time I’ve seen you since you became a big important starship captain. How’d you swing that, by the way?” he asked, leading the group inside. They took seats in the livingroom, joined by Aurelan and Peter. Saavik stared at them curiously.

“Oh, that. Uh, it was… a battlefield promotion. Afterwards they decided to keep it. It’s a long story.” He cast a pointed glance at the children.

“Oh. Okay. Maybe you can tell it to me later.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Where are my manners, I completely forgot to introduce myself. I’m Sam Kirk, Jim’s brother.”

Spock inclined his head. “I am Lieutenant-Commander Spock, First Officer of the Enterprise.”

Sam turned to Saavik expectantly. She stared at him, unresponsive. Jim didn’t intercede, hoping she would figure it out on her own and introduce herself.

“And this is your daughter?” he asked Spock after the silence became awkward.

“No. This is Saavik of Hellguard, daughter of James Kirk,” he said, introducing her in the Vulcan way.

_“What?!”_

“Oh yeah,” Jim rubbed the back of his neck. “I sorta forgot to tell you at first, and then a bunch of time had passed and we were coming to Deneva anyway, so I decided to surprise you. Surprise.”

 _“You’re_  somebody’s  _dad?”_  Peter asked incredulously.

“Yeah, I am, Peter, and I’m an awesome dad,” he rolled his eyes.

“Where did—“ Aurelan started, then reconsidered her phrasing. “Who is the mother?”

“I, uh, don’t know.”

“God, Jim, please tell me you didn’t knock up some random Vulcan and get this kid left on your doorste—“

“I adopted her,” he said. “We rescued her as part of a mission. I can’t tell you more details than that because it’s all super classified, I swear.”

“Jim…”

“I swear.”

“I’m Romulan,” Saavik said. “Only half Vulcan.”

Sam nearly choked and Aurelan looked just as shocked, no doubt wondering how in the universe a hybrid like that even existed, what with the giant uncrossable Neutral Zone separating the two species—much less how Jim had come to find this kid.

He decided to completely change the subject to safer topics. And continue the introductions, of course.

“Saavik, this is your Uncle Sam, your Auntie Aurelan, and your cousin Peter.”

“Cousin,” Peter repeated dubiously. His parents looked dumbstruck.

Saavik looked to Jim questioningly. He quickly realized the problem.

“Um, you remember Sednar and Solgar? And how they looked alike and were very close to each other? They were brothers. Sam here is my brother. Aurelan is his… mate. Peter is their kid. That makes you related to them, through me.”

Saavik nodded slowly, and Peter’s jaw dropped a bit. “Why didn’t she know what those words meant? Where the hell did she come from?”

“Peter! Language!”

“That information is classified,” Spock said.

“Why don’t you and your… cousin, go play outside for a bit?” Sam suggested. Peter looked about to protest having to go play with a kid six years younger than him, but Sam fixed him with a stern look, saying this wasn’t really a suggestion.

He sighed. “Do you know how to play baseball?” he asked in monotone. Saavik shook her head.

“Of course you don’t,” he muttered.

“Peter…” his mother warned.

“I mean, why don’t I teach you then?” he covered, already grabbing a bat, ball, and mitts. He paused at the door, realizing Saavik was still seated.

“It’s okay,” Jim smiled gently. “He’s safe. You can go follow him.”

Well, he had been right about Spock and Peter hadn’t even done anything remotely scary or evil like he had, at least as far as Saavik knew… She stood and headed outside with him.

“Commander, would you like to join me in the kitchen? I have some questions about your research. Travelling around the galaxy like that, it’s really the scientific opportunity of a lifetime,” Aurelan said lightly.

An unspecific question floated across the bond.

 _It’s okay, I can handle Sam. You go. I owe him this anyways,_ Jim replied.

Spock nodded, rising. “Yes it truly is.”

“Would you like something to drink? The replicator can make you anything you like,” she said, leading him into the kitchen.

“Tea will be adequate.”

And then they were alone.

Sam rounded on him. “Jim, what the hell? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this earlier!”

“I was gonna, honest, but we were already heading towards Dene—“

“Does Mom know?”

Jim opened his mouth, then looked to the floor.

“Jesus, Jim. You can’t do this to people. You can’t just show up here with a kid without giving me any warni—“

“I only adopted her like a month and a half ago, Sam, it’s not like I’ve been hiding a secret child for years or something. And so much of this stuff is classified that I didn’t think it would be smart to talk about it over a vidcall.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. All you had to say was that you adopted a kid, if the details are classified then the details are classified, but you should have at least told me.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, in the interest of total disclosure…”

“What, don’t tell me your married now too,” Sam joked, trying to lighten the mood. Jim cringed. There was no good way to reply to that.

And thankfully or unthankfully, he didn’t have to. Sam caught sight of his expression and froze.

“No,” he said. “Oh my god, Jim! Are you kidding me?! Because you better be fucking kidding me here. If you got married and had a kid without telling anyone—“

“I’m sorry, okay? And it’s not a real marriage. I just needed Vulcan citizenship so I could adopt Saavik, and the only way to get that is by marrying a Vulcan citizen.”

“A Vulcan citi…” Understanding dawned, and his eyes bulged. “Your first officer?”

“Yeah. Nothing’s actually going on between us though, which is why I didn’t wanna tell you or Mom. I knew you guys would make a big deal out of it, when it’s honestly nothing.”

He snorted. “I saw the way you look at the guy, Jim. It’s not nothing. I was going to ask about it even before you said anything.”

“No, it’s not like that. I don’t think of Spock that way. There’s nothing going on.”

“You wish there was, though.”

“No! No I don’t.” God, now he sounded defensive. He sighed when Sam smirked. “You aren’t gonna believe me, are you?”

“Nope,” he said giddily.

“Well then you’re believing a lie. Congrats. You’re no better than the Vulcan government now.” That didn’t even make sense.

“If there’s nothing going on and you don’t feel anything for the guy, then why’d you beam him down here to meet your family? And he treats Saavik like she’s just as much his daughter as she is yours, Jim, don’t act like you haven’t noticed,” he leaned back in his chair, smiling. “You got yourself a little family. My baby brother’s all grown up.”

Jim rolled his eyes.

The window near them shattered with a loud crash and the wall directly beyond it went next, a hole about a foot around appearing in it as a projectile ripped through. Jim and Sam shot to their feet, almost stepping on shards of glass in the process.

The kids were standing about a thousand feet away from the window, Saavik holding the bat and Peter staring at her with unrestrained awe and admiration. “That was awesome!”

* * *

 

Later that night, Jim did call his mom. Just to tell her about Saavik, though, he wasn’t gonna breathe one word about the bond to Spock. The last thing he needed was two busybody relatives making things awkward between them.

He got her voicemail.

“Hi. Mom,” he said, feeling oddly nervous. “It’s me, Jim. I’m just calling to tell you that, uh…” He chuckled. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna put it out there. I adopted a kid. Her name is Saavik, she’s six years old, half Vulcan and half Romulan. Sweet kid. You’d like her. I sure do. Um. I can’t really tell you more than that. I met her through a mission, and it’s all been classified. I’m sure you understand, though, right?”

He paused, feeling like something was missing. “I’ll send you a picture of her after I hang up here. Uh. I guess that’s it. I love you, Mom. Bye.”

His finger stabbed the end call button and he let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He always felt like this after calling his mother. It wasn’t that she was abusive or a shitty mother or anything like that. She had tried her best. Jim knew that. But at the end of it all, she always had to climb back up into her starship and sail away.

He could never picture himself doing the same thing. Had never even considered joining Starfleet while growing up. The idea of leaving someone behind like that was still so… He had adopted Saavik and took her out to the stars with him rather than repeat the procedure.

* * *

 

He watched Spock reading the next chapter of  _Alice in Wonderland_  to Saavik that evening and wondered at Sam’s words. Not the whole relationship thing, god no, that was bullshit. He didn’t have feelings for Spock. He didn’t. 

But what he had said about him and Saavik. That Spock treated her like his own daughter. Watching him read in the low light, sitting on her bed with her tucked into the covers, it wasn’t hard to imagine.

And Jim wondered.

* * *

 

He woke up the next morning draped half on top of Spock and with an arm curled over the man’s shoulder. He was practically clinging to him.

Sleepy and warm and not realizing who he was with, Jim nuzzled his neck without thinking about it, sighing happily.

“Good morning, Captain.”

He bolted upright and jumped out of bed as if burned.  _“Shit._  I’m so sorry Spock, I didn’t realize—I would never—“

“It is fine, Captain. As I said earlier, I expected as much, given your human nature.” He stood fluidly and headed to the kitchenette. He began replicating ingredients to make a homemade breakfast, something that was on its way to becoming a habit by now.

And maybe he was okay with this, but Jim sure wasn’t. That was embarrassing as hell. And worse yet, it would probably happen again in the future. He was a professional, he couldn’t  _cuddle_  with his first officer. There had to be a line somewhere. Granted, everybody thought they were married, but that wasn’t the truth. It was a fake marriage. Jim didn’t have any feelings for him.

It was a fake marriage.

What he said next was going to make that a lot harder to defend, but he wasn’t gonna back out of something so important because he got a little squeamish at the thought of feelings. He had come to this decision last night, and he had to bring it up now, before Saavik woke up.

“So I talked with my brother yesterday,” he started.

“I am aware.” He would never understand the human need to restate obvious facts. It was… endearing, but remarkably inefficient.

He cracked two eggs against a pan. He was distracting himself from his task.

“He said that you treat Saavik like she’s your own daughter. And it got me thinking,” he leaned forward, propping himself up against the table, “what if she was?”

“I can guarantee that it was not my genetic material that contributed to her Vulcan half.”

“No. No,” he laughed. “I mean, what if you adopted her?”

Spock stopped moving. He mechanically set the eggshells down on the counter.

“I mean,” Jim hurried. He hadn’t really considered what would happen if Spock said no. “It was just a suggestion. If you want. I was just thinking, you’re practically already raising her with me anyway, I figured it was just making it official. But obviously if this is too much you can just forget I said anything. In fact, you should definitely just do that. Let’s just pretend this whole conversation—“

“Jim.” Spock said solemnly. “I would be honored.”

His grin could have outshone a star.

* * *

 

He brought it up while he was teaching Saavik how to play poker later. How to cheat at poker would come next week.

“What would you think if Spock was part of our family?” he asked.

“He isn’t already?”

“What? No.”

“But I thought he was your mate. Aren’t mates family?”

Oh god, he was going to give her really screwy ideas about what marriage was supposed to be like. “Okay, normally, mates would always be family to each other. But with me and Spock it’s different. We only bonded so I could be a Vulcan citizen because I had to be in order to adopt you. We aren’t… We aren’t real bondmates.”

She frowned. “That is not how mates are supposed to be.”

He laughed. He hadn’t expected her to be such a traditionalist about it. “Why, Saavik, aren’t you glad that I adopted you?”

She paled. “Yes,” she said quietly.

“Good. Because I would do it over again in a heartbeat. A thousand times. Adopting you was the best decision of my life and I don’t regret it for a second, you got that?”

She nodded.

“Good. Because Spock wants to adopt you too,” he grinned. “Obviously you’re just too amazing for everybody to not love you.”

She blushed, looking down at the floor, and Jim’s heart brimmed even wider. He meant every word he said.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“Yes it does. It makes perfect sense. Saavik, people love you, sweetheart, and I don’t ever want you thinking otherwise.”

“No, I mean,” she pursed her lips. “Adoption is when a family takes someone they aren’t related to and makes them one of their own. We’re the family. Spock is the new one. We’re adopting him, not the other way around.”

You know what. He couldn’t argue with that.

“You’re absolutely right, Saavik. We are adopting Spock. I take it that means you approve?”

She nodded happily, and Jim tickled her, eliciting peals of laughter.

* * *

 

Jim took the scroll down from where it was hung up on the wall over their bed and brought it to the table. Spock added his signature to the blank space it had for a co-parent, dancing Vulcan calligraphy joining the other two signatures.

There would be official forms to send off from padds later, but this, here and now, this was the real thing.

In a burst of emotion, Jim crushed the two of them in a bear hug, releasing quickly when Spock stiffened.

_You got yourself a little family._

It was true. There was no way around it now. They were, undeniably, a family.


	14. Biological Differences

Spock’s computer beeped, signaling an incoming vidcall from his father. Figuring it was something urgent, he opened it.

Sarek’s stony face met his, somehow seeming more emotionless and disapproving than usual. “I received a call from Winona Kirk this morning.”

That gave him pause. It wasn’t like his father to employ a non-sequitur like that. “I fail to see how that is relevant to anything pertaining to me.”

“She appeared to be in a state of heightened emotionalism. She informed me that you had married her son and adopted a child together.”

Spock tensed, desperately trying to think of something to say.

“I inquired as to his identity and discovered that this man is your captain. The James Kirk you speak so highly of.”

His throat felt oddly constricted.

“Why did you not inform me of these occurrences?”

“I did not think it was relevant.”

“Matters of family are always relevant to me, Spock,” he said. “You will return to New Vulcan at once so that I can meet my granddaughter.”

“I cannot. I am bound by duty and a five-year contract to go wherever the Enterprise goes. Given how recently we left New Vulcan, it is unlikely we will return there any time in the near future.”

“So take personal leave.”

“You misunderstand the situation, Father. Saavik is not solely my child to drag across the galaxy wherever I please. Her adoption was recent, and I do not imagine the captain will take kindly to being separated from her so soon, especially for an extended period of time.”

“He is welcome to come as well. I see no reason why he should refuse you this. I have found that a human in love can be quite accommodating.”

“Father, he is not in love with me.”

Sarek’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Humans do not typically marry for reasons other than love.”

“There were extenuating circumstances. Initially, it was he alone who intended to adopt Saavik. In order to do that, he required Vulcan citizenship. This could only be acquired through marriage to one who already had it.”

“That is false.”

“What?”

“That is false. Citizenship can be acquired through bonding to a Vulcan. A bond of any sort is sufficient, including familial,” he said. “You must have known this. That is how Michael acquired her citizenship.”

“A familial bond can take months or even years to form. We had one week,” he said defensively.

“And does your husband know about this particular loophole?”

“No. I did not think it was—“

“Relevant, of course,” Sarek said. “We will be discussing this further upon your arrival on New Vulcan.”

He ended the call. A deep sense of dread settled in Spock’s stomach despite his best attempts to purge the emotion.

* * *

 

“Spock, you aren’t going to believe this,” Jim said later, reading from a padd. “The Enterprise is being sent back to New Vulcan on orders all the way up from the Federation Council.”

His mouth went dry. How…?

“Apparently the Vulcans are saying they’re being disregarded in the Federation because of their new lower numbers, and so what better way to show them how important they are than by having Starfleet’s finest flagship personally hand-deliver their supplies to them?” He rolled his eyes. “Diplomats, right?”

“I do find them uncomfortably manipulative, Captain.”

“Spock, for the last time, we’re raising a kid together, call me Jim when we’re off duty,” he said. Then he registered what Spock was saying. “Wait, what do you mean by that?”

“I believe this mission was engineered by my father in order to draw us to New Vulcan. He found out about our arrangement, and insisted that I come at once. I supplied him with a list of logical reasons why that was impractical. He ignored them and insisted I was still coming.”

“You’re saying your dad caused a diplomatic incident just to get you to come visit him? You know, you could’ve just taken leave, Spock. You’re not like… a prisoner on the ship or anything.”

“I realize this,” he said. “I do not wish to go.”

“Can I ask why?” Jim frowned.

“He claims he merely wishes to meet Saavik. Things with my family are rarely that simple and Vulcans are rarely that sentimental.”

“You think he has ulterior motives,” he said. His mind raced to make a deduction. “He doesn’t like our bond.”

“No he does not.”

Jim ran a hand through his hair. “Great. On a scale of one to ten, how afraid should I be?”

“I do not believe my father means to do you physical harm.”

“Well that’s a relief. But he’s clearly a very powerful man, Spock. So on a scale of one to ten, how afraid should I be?” he asked dryly.

“Perhaps a seven.”

_“Fuck.”_

* * *

 

Saavik hadn’t been allowed to eat solid food for her first month aboard the Enterprise. At first she had been fed intravenously only, with only small sips of water permitted otherwise. Then she was on liquid nutritional supplements and able to hold down water well enough that it didn’t have to be regulated. Soon enough she was able to handle broths and thicker soups and smoothies. For the last two weeks, Bones had put her on a restricted diet that was almost entirely fruits and vegetables with only small amounts of bread or cheese allowed—which he swore was what Vulcans pretty much lived off of anyway.

And now, sixty-two days after her rescue, forty-five days after she had been adopted, Saavik was finally allowed to eat whatever she wanted. Within reason, of course.

“Don’t you dare go loading up on sugar the second you get out of here,” Bones said. “If that kid throws up, Jim, she’s going right back on the restricted diet and I’ll tan your hide for lettin’ it happen.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jim said, ushering Saavik out of sickbay.

He was keenly aware of what a body could and couldn’t handle post-starvation. A little sugar wasn’t gonna hurt her at this point, Bones was just being paranoid and over-protective. The kid needed to live a little. God knows she hadn’t gotten to yet in her life.

He led her to the mess hall, which had the replicators with the most options programmed in. “Okay Saavik,” he said. “You can have absolutely anything you want. So, what do you want for your first meal of freedom?”

She shrugged. She knew she wanted to try something different—she’d pretty much been living off various Vulcan fruits, balkra, and sunflower seeds for two weeks now.

Back on Hellguard, she’d had the same rations every single day. Every morning, a guard would slide a tray through a slot in her cell containing a small pile of blended, brownish mush, a spoon, and a small ration of water. And that would be what she ate for the day.

She had seen the people here eat a wide variety of colorful things they seemed to enjoy, but she had no frame of reference for what these things were or whether she would enjoy them too.

Jim seemed to understand. “Okay, well how about I make a recommendation? A hot fudge sundae. They’re amazing, you’ll love it.”

“Okay,” she agreed, completely trusting him.

After Tarsus, all he had wanted for the longest time was good old Terran pizza and ice cream. The second he was cleared to eat solid food, he had gorged himself on it and then spent three hours throwing it all back up into a toilet, feeling lower than shit for wasting that much food.

But that wasn’t going to happen here.

He replicated her a very small sundae in a cup and himself a larger one and they sat down at a table together. Saavik poked at the whipped cream on top with her spoon, testing its consistency.

“It’s soft,” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Fluffy. The actual ice cream is underneath.”

She pushed the whipped cream around as if to verify the statement’s truth, revealing thick ice cream and dark chocolate. “What’s this?”

“The hot fudge. It’s good. Try it.”

She did, making sure she got a spoonful with all three materials on it. Her eyes widened, and Jim burst out laughing.

“You like that, do you?” She nodded, digging around in her cup and seeking out more of the hot fudge.

They ate in silence after that. Saavik seemed a little bit out of it, but Jim figured she was just tired and wrote it off.

Until Spock showed up and stood beside their table positively emanating cold fury.

“Hey Spock,” he said. “What’s up?”

“You allowed Saavik to have chocolate.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, Bones cleared her to have solid food. I know it’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but I figure we’re celebrating.”

“Jim,” Spock said. “Chocolate has an inebriating effect on Vulcans.”

For a second, he didn’t react, completely frozen. Then his hand shot across the table and he yanked the sundae out of Saavik’s grasp, who whined at the loss. “Hey!”

“Sorry Saavik, you can’t have this,” he said. He couldn’t believe this. Suddenly her glazed over eyes and foggy expression made perfect sense. He had just gotten a six-year-old tipsy.

“Come on, let’s take you to bed. I think you need a nap,” he said. She nodded sleepily, wobbling a bit when she hopped out of her chair. Jim placed a hand on her shoulder to lead her, which was his favored substitute for holding her hand.

“I feel funny,” she slurred. He winced, cursing himself.

“I know. I’m so sorry sweetheart. You’ll feel better tomorrow, I promise.”

After the hangover wore off, that is.

* * *

 

The door adjoining their quarters shut behind him with a muted hiss of air and he slumped against it.

“God. I’m so sorry, Spock, I didn’t know. I never would’ve given her chocolate if I had.”

“Apologies are unnecessary, Captain. As you have stated, you didn’t know.”

“Are there any other dietary restrictions I should know about? Salt isn’t a deadly poison to you guys or anything like that, right?” he laughed weakly.

“It is not. In answer to your first question, most Vulcans practice vegetarianism out of respect for the sanctity of all life. This is a cultural tradition and not a biological mandate, however. Saavik could eat meat if she wishes.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s good to know.” He wanted to be as aware of her cultural heritage as possible. He knew she identified with her Romulan heritage as well, but even less was known about them than the Vulcans. He tried to do what he could so she could stay in touch with her roots if she chose to.

“Thanks, Spock. For everything. I don’t know how I would be able to do this without you, and that’s not just because you’re Vulcan and know Vulcan things, but because of everything. You’ve really been such a help with Saavik, and I think she’s starting to really like you too.”

He felt a flicker of pleased surprise across the bond, and he was glad for it, because while he was getting better at reading him, he still wouldn’t have been able to tell by his face alone.

“Thank you. It is… no trouble,” Spock said, and Jim grinned.

* * *

 

Saavik was not the only child aboard the Enterprise.

Bringing your kids along was fully allowed, and there were even special family quarters available for those who wanted to make use of them. But research vessel or no, bringing your kids on board a starship was still insanely dangerous and not a risk most parents were willing to take. The few who did were mainly single parents without any close extended family they could rely on. In total, there were eight other children aboard.

They had converted rec room four into a playground of sorts.

It wasn’t anything close to a real Earth park. There wasn’t a single plant in sight. The sunlight was artificial. The air was recycled. The ceiling was no higher than in any other room. But it was a big space nonetheless and it had all the cool playground equipment you could hope for. For kids who lived in space, it was good enough.

“Alright,” Jim said as they entered. “This is what’s called a playground. Kids come to them to have fun. You run around and climb on things and basically do whatever you want, as long as you don’t get hurt or hurt anybody else.”

He settled down on a bench off to the side with one of his old-style paper books. Saavik wandered over to the playground, climbing up onto the set.

There were two other kids currently there: a disinterested ten-year-old girl on the swings, and a boy maybe Saavik’s age or a year younger who popped his head up from the merry-go-round when he saw her. He hopped off and clamored over to join her.

“Hi! I’m Tommy. What’s your name?” he asked.

“Saavik,” she said cautiously.

“What species are you? I’m a human.”

“I’m Romulan,” she said. “And Vulcan a little bit.”

Tommy’s eyes widened. “My mom says Rom’lans are scary.”

“They are, but I’m not one of the scary Romulans.”

He smiled brightly. “Good! Let’s go play!”

He took her hand to lead her back to the merry-go-round and Saavik gasped and swung a fist straight into his face, connecting with his nose with a loud  _crack._

Tommy screamed and burst out crying.

Jim and a blonde lady came rushing over, talking and yelling frantically and Tommy was still screaming and there was blood coming out of his nose in a terrifying red color she had never seen before and it was too much and too much and—

she was screaming, and—

her face was wet, hot drops rolling down it—

She opened her eyes.

She was tucked into her bed with the lights low. She crawled out, padding over to the door to her parents’ quarters. It opened without them seeming to notice.

“—defending herself when someone touches her inappropriately.”

“She must still be punished, Jim, the child was five and her strength—“

“Is—“ she swallowed. Her voice sounded small somehow. “Is Tommy okay?”

Her parents turned to her.

“He has a broken nose,” Jim said gently.

“He is fully functional otherwise and will make a complete recovery within three days,” Spock said.

“Can I see him?”

Jim cast a glance back at Spock. “We’ll have to ask his mother first.”

* * *

 

Saavik approached Tommy’s biobed slowly while Jim and Tommy’s mother Karen glared daggers at each other behind her back.

She held out a bouquet of flowers. “My dad says that humans say sorry by giving each other plants.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Tommy took the flowers, sniffing them, before setting them on the table beside his biobed.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” she said.

“I’m sorry I touched your hand. Your dad with the pointy ears says Vulcans don’t like that.”

They lapsed into silence.

“Since we’re both sorry, how ‘bout we both be un-sorry and be friends instead?” Tommy said.

Saavik’s eyes lit up with hope. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Balkra= a Vulcan vegetable casserole with the consistency of mashed potatoes
> 
> I listed the sunflower seeds because they're high in copper and I figure Saavik would need that in the same amounts that humans need iron.


	15. Seeing Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vai= holy  
> t'sai= lady

Sarek had managed to swing it so that they were spending a full day on New Vulcan as an official Federation presence rather than having it be a simple stop-and-go supply run. The trip went significantly faster than last time, as they took it at warp three rather than impulse power. Jim just wanted to get this whole thing over with, deal with the Vulcan shotgun talk and then move on with his life.

The three of them beamed down to Sarek’s front lawn and a servant immediately appeared to usher them inside and take their shoes, which were removed the second they set foot inside. They were then shown into an honest-to-god sitting room, because apparently Sarek is rich enough to have a sitting room and servants to show guests into it, as if he were a Victorian era lord or something.

Jim felt faint amusement through the bond and wondered at that.

The man himself showed up not a few minutes later. “Are you aware that it was unnecessary to marry my son to gain Vulcan citizenship?”

So much for human niceties.

“Uh,” Jim said, very intelligently. “What?”

“A bond of any sort to a citizen would have been sufficient. A familial bond to Saavik, for instance.”

Jim looked to Spock a bit helplessly.

“A familial bond must be formed organically over an extended period of time as both participants’ minds come to recognize the other as family. You do not yet have such a bond with her. If we had attempted to wait for it to form, you would not have been able to adopt Saavik.”

“What?” Saavik asked, her voice almost a sob. Jim moved over to her side immediately, stroking a hand comfortingly along her back.

“Shh, sweetie, it’s okay. They don’t know what they’re saying. I always would have found a way to adopt you, no matter what, and no one is ever going to take you away from me. It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?” She paused, then nodded uncertainly. Jim hugged her, shooting a glare at Sarek over her head.

“Perhaps Saavik can be shown to the room she will be staying in,” Spock said.

“That is acceptable,” Sarek agreed, and rang for a servant to come and show the little girl out.

“I did not intend to upset her,” he said, and Jim figured that was as close to an apology as he was going to get.

Not quite good enough.

“You know, if you have a problem with our bond, you can just come out and say so,” he said.

“Indeed. I take issue with your bond. It is illogical.”

“On the contrary, Sarek, it was created with purely logical motives. Emotionalism was not a factor,” Spock replied.

“A bond is a sacred thing. It must not be undertaken in such a casual manner or for such obscene purposes. You have taken something vai and abused it to flout the law.”

“Is giving a child a home not a noble cause? The law forbad Saavik access to a willing and capable family. When the law is unjust, it must be broken.”

“And that’s not even a real ‘law,’ either,” Jim cut it. “It was one little restriction on adoption requirements. So we dodged some bureaucratic red tape, so what?”

“The joining of souls should not be done to avoid ‘red tape,’” Sarek said. “A bond is unlike a human marriage. It is not a simple matter of paperwork. A forced bond between two incompatible individuals will result in deleterious health effects—“

“We are not incompatible,” Spock said. “In fact, we are highly compatible. Far more so than I was with T’Pring.”

Sarek’s face retreated further into stoic impassivity. “I see. And you are not in love?”

“We are not.”

“I see.”

 _See what,_  Jim wanted to scream.

* * *

 

Sarek was determined to spend as much time with Saavik as possible before she had to leave. He was going to take her out for the day and show her around—not that there were many sights, but the natural world was pretty amazing. That left Jim and Spock essentially with the house to themselves, except for the servants who were presumably still there but kept their distance.

Spock rang for a servant and requested a bowl of fruit. They were doing the light work required to oversee the transfer of supplies—mainly building materials—with Spock seated at a desk and Jim stretched out languidly on the couch.

“Thank you, T’Hanoy,” he said.

“Of course, S’haile Spock,” she said, excusing herself. Jim watched the exchange curiously.

“What does s’haile mean?” he asked, butchering the pronunciation.

“S’Haile,” Spock corrected. “It is a title of nobility, similar to the human ‘lord.’”

_“What?”_

Spock quirked an eyebrow up inquisitively. Jim shook his head to gather himself. “You mean to tell me you’re Vulcan nobility?”

“Affirmative. As is Saavik, who inherits the title through me. She is a t’sai.”

And suddenly it all made sense. The giant mansion. The servants. His clan matriarch being a prominent member of the High Council. Spock’s comments about T’Mai’s adoptive family. Him saying they were noble and he knew them and Jim thinking that was a funny coincidence but of course he knew them. He ran in the same circles.

“Are you, like, related to royalty or something?”

“Yes.”

“What?!”

“However, I am not in line for any throne. I am related to royalty through my half-brother Sybok, who is the son of a Vulcan princess. She is now deceased.”

“You have a brother?” Jim asked. He wasn’t even shocked at this point. Of course Spock had a secret royal brother.

“Affirmative.”

“Spock, you should have told me all of this way before now. Your family is Saavik’s family, and my family by extension. I had a right to know.”

“In that case, I should inform you that I also have an adoptive sister. She is human and her name is Michael.”

Jim breathed out a long sigh, eyes closed. “Is that it?”

“I believe so.”

“Good. And let’s make a deal—from now on we always tell each other about family stuff, no matter what. No secrets. Can you agree to that?”

“I can. I shall,” he said. “Do you have any ‘family stuff’ you wish to disclose?”

“I got a brother I rarely see and a mom who was never around. Oh, and a stepfather named Frank.” He didn’t need to mention his actual father. Spock and everyone else in the galaxy were all too aware of what Nero had done.

Deciding a change of subject was in order, he gestured to Spock’s bowl of fruit. “Which of these are the sash-savases so I know to avoid them?”

“Sash-savaslar,” Spock corrected. “These ones.” He held up a bright-green, tuber-looking fruit and took a bite out of it.

Jim had gotten a full ten-minute lecture from Bones on making sure not to eat any of them when Saavik had been on her special diet. The name translated literally to ‘acid fruit,’ and apparently they had the citric acid content of 37 lemons. It was perfectly safe for Vulcans to eat though, because their mouths were less sensitive than humans’ and their sense of taste was barely there in comparison. Their food leaned to extremely strong flavors or extremely bland as a result.

He took hold of a red-orange fruit instead and popped it straight into his mouth.

And spit it out the second it touched his tongue.  _“Ow!_  What the fuck. What the fuck!”

“Do you find the fruit displeasing?” Spock asked.

“That’s not a fruit, that’s a chili pepper that grew in a volcano in hell!”

“I assure you it is not. It is merely the yon-savas, or fire fruit.”

_“Why do you people eat this stuff?”_

* * *

Bones had to hypo him directly in the tongue. Jim got a fifteen-minute lecture about eating alien foods he wasn’t familiar with and how he was lucky he wasn’t deathly allergic.

* * *

 

“What can you tell me about James?” Sarek asked.

“James?” Saavik responded.

“Jim.”

“Oh. Um. He’s nice. He likes me and Spock and Bones. And the Ennerpize. And stars, he really likes stars.”

“Beyond that. What sort of man is he?”

“Nice. Smart. My dad. One time he let me sit in the captain’s chair.”

“Is he honorable?”

“What’s that mean?” That was her new phrase. Jim had told her she could always ask it when she didn’t understand what was going on, and now she used it as often as a human child asked ‘why.’

“Is he honest? Can he be trusted? Would you say he is a good man?”

“Jim never lies to me. I trust him more than anybody. He is the goodest man,” Saavik said confidently.

Sarek pondered that. A child’s testimony could hardly be considered wise. But it would be honest, as honest as she knew it to be. If Saavik said that Jim was all those things, then she really meant it.

Spock had said they were highly compatible. He was more likely to downplay something than to over-exaggerate, though he did have a flair for the dramatic. But if he was truly being dramatic, he would have said it was almost on the level of a t’hy’la bond. Sarek knew his son. The fact that he didn’t meant he was unsure how to categorize it. It meant it might truly be a t’hy’la bond.

A t’hy’la bond created out of convenience and then disregarded. Unacceptable.

“Saavik, I have a proposition for you,” he said. “Would you like your parents to enter into a romantic relationship?”

* * *

 

Saavik set the plan in motion soon after nightfall.

“Daddy, where’s your home planet?” she asked innocently.

“Uh, I’m not sure we’ll be able to see it from here, but we can try and look,” he said. They went out to the balcony together and looked up at the sky, Jim searching for the telltale speck of blue that was Earth.

“My home planet is called Earth, or Terra,” he said quietly. “It’s a beautiful place. Got a lot of water. And the people are amazing, so real and alive and diverse. The whole place is just covered in plants, most of them green, and the air is so fresh… It’s wonderful.”

“Where is it?” Saavik asked.

“I can’t find it without a star chart,” he admitted. He leaned back into the doorway and raised his voice. “Hey Spock, you got a star chart anywhere around here?”

Spock rose and thumbed through a shelf of padds, selecting one and heading off to join them on the balcony. He held it up to the sky, examining it with that intense focus of his, and Jim couldn’t help staring. He was beautiful like this, drenched in starlight and putting that sharp mind of his to work. What would it take to get it to completely stop working, to fluster him so completely he couldn’t think, to get under his skin to the point where there was only emotion and raw drives, to make all that Vulcan control fall to shreds—

Jim shook his head to clear it, regaining his focus. Spock was talking. Had been this whole time, likely. Thank god. He wouldn’t have been able to hear his thoughts then.

“—believe Earth is that planet. It appears as a small blue dot at this distance, remarkably close to the star of Andoria, though in fact they are light years away from each other.”

Saavik craned her neck, standing on her tiptoes to reach above the balcony’s wide railing. “I can’t see!”

“Here,” Jim hoisted her up to sit on the railing, keeping a firm grip on her so she wouldn’t fall. “Can you see now?”

She giggled and nodded happily. The peaceful moment lasted for about two seconds before her eyes darted between her two parents and she yawned and said “I’m tired. I’m going to bed now.”

“I will be in to read you your bedtime story shortly,” Spock said, and she nodded, already partway out the door.

“That went fast,” Jim said, sparing one last look up at the sky. “You know, to tell you the truth, I still can’t see it.”

Spock moved closer to show him the star chart, pointing up into the sky. “It is 18.5 degrees west of true north, directly to the left of the Andorian star and 8.32 degrees south by southeast of a triad of stars. There.” He placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder so they were practically on top of each other—at the same angle—and pointed.

One finger slipped accidentally beneath the collar of his uniform shirt and a flow of pure electricity ran between them where their skin touched. Jim gasped and stepped away.

“What  _was_  that?” he asked.

Spock looked just as shocked and ruffled—for half a second, then steely Vulcan control snapped back in place. “The bond,” he said, as if was just realizing it himself. “It is… strong. We have not been engaging in sufficient physical contact to be satisfactory. Therefore the bond is forcing our bodies to call out for one another’s, and creating a pleasant physical reaction as positive reinforcement. It would be less severe were we to engage in physical contact more frequently.”

“Oh,” was all Jim could say, because then he felt it. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed before Spock said anything, maybe he had been unconsciously ignoring it, but there it was. The desire to touch, to take, to hold, to claim. That one fingerprint of contact had been delicious, had been awakening. All he wanted to do was run his hands over every inch of Spock, to rip off that stupid uniform and touch what was underneath, to kiss him in the human way until he was breathless and panting, to take his hands in his own and find new ways to make him shudder, to—

Spock felt the desire strongly and could not tell if it was his or his bondmate’s.


	16. The Enterprise Incident, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this chapter's a bit dry, but things pick up in the next one, I swear.

“I have completed the assignment, Captain,” Chekov said, handing off a padd. “A theoretical incursion in—“

“Yes, Mr. Chekov, I can read,” he said. “And as usual, your theoretical evaluations  _do not tally with mine._  Return to your duty, I’ll let you know when your work is satisfactory.”

He walked briskly over to the science station. “Mr. Spock. Full sensor scan of the region, please.”

“I did give a full report on it just—“

“Yes, Mr. Spock, that was the past. I’m concerned with the present. Or is it becoming too much for this crew to present me current information?” he addressed the bridge at large. Chekov was somewhere between cowering and glaring at his station.

“No, sir. Compliance presents no problem,” Spock said in his humans-are-stupid-children voice.

“Then, Mr. Spock, comply.”

“Sensor scan to one-half parsec,” he said. “Negative, Captain.”

“Very well.”

Jim wandered over to navigation. “Maintaining course and speed, sir,” Sulu said.

“Change course. Come about to 185, mark 3.”

Spock spun in his chair to stare at him. Jim determinedly met his gaze.

“But sir, that’ll lead us directly into the Romulan Neutral Zone,” Sulu pointed out.

“Yes, very perceptive, Mr. Sulu. I know where the course change takes us,” he said. “Execute.”

By now, Spock wasn’t the only one staring incredulously. He had the attention of most of the bridge. “Aye, sir.”

“Increasing sensor scan to one parsec,” Spock said, staring into the instrumentation. “All scanners report clear. Nothing in our immediate vicinity.”

“Better and better, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. He paced the length of the bridge, wearing off unspent energy.

“Captain, leaving Neutral Zone. Now entering Romulan space,” Sulu said, concern etched in his features. He kept looking to the captain questioningly.

Scotty stepped onto the bridge and frowned deeply when he heard those words. He walked over to the communications station. “Lieutenant, when did the order come in?” he whispered, leaning close.

Uhura removed her earpiece. “Order?”

He nodded. “From Starfleet. The order to enter the Neutral Zone.”

“There’s been no order I know of, Mr. Scott.”

“Surely the captain couldn’t be doing this on his own authority,” he said, disbelieving. Only now he was talking a bit louder than he intended.

“If you two have complaints, you can bring them out into the open,” Kirk snapped.

And then something appeared on the screen.

Finally.

“That’s a Klingon ship!” Scotty said. “But it couldn’t be, not in this area.”

“Intelligence reports Romulans now using Klingon design,” Spock read out.

“Sound red alert. Man battle stations. Standby main phasers,” Kirk said.

“Battle stations. All hands, battle stations,” Uhura said into the intercom. The klaxon blare of the red alert nearly drowned her out on the bridge, but she would sound louder throughout the rest of the ship.

“Second ship has appeared,” Spock announced needlessly. “Correction. There are now three.”

Surrounded by three Klingon ships while in Romulan space. It was the exact scenario of the Kobayashi Maru, but in real life. The lives here were real. The deaths here were real. The consequences and the Romulans out there were real. The careful peace treaty they had been maintaining for lifetimes had just been broken for real.

He had beaten the Kobayashi Maru before and he would do it again.

Spock pulled himself away from his sensors. “We are surrounded.”

“Lieutenant Uhura, code a message to Starfleet Command. Advise them of our situation. Include all log entries to this point,” he said. “Mr. Spock, your sensors read clear. What happened?”

“I have a theory, Captain, that—“

“Captain Kirk, I’m receiving a class two signal from the Romulan vessel.”

“Put it on the main viewing screen, Lieutenant, and complete that message to Starfleet Command.”

“Aye, sir.”

The viewscreen wavered, then showed the bridge of the first Romulan vessel. A keen looking Romulan sat in the captain’s chair, leaning forward casually, elbows resting on his knees.

“You have been identified as the starship Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk last known to be in command.”

“Your information is correct. This is Captain Kirk.”

“I am Subcommander Tal of the Romulan Fleet. Your ship is surrounded, Captain. You will surrender immediately or we will destroy you,” he said matter-of-factly.

Jim motioned for temporary lapse of the transmission. “They want something, or they would have destroyed us by now.”

“True, Captain. That would be standard Romulan procedure,” Spock agreed.

“It’s my ship they want, and very badly.”

“It would be a great prize.”

He resumed transmission. “Save your threats. If you board this ship, I’ll blow it up. You’ll gain nothing.”

The subcommander ignored him. “Who is that beside you?”

“My first officer, Commander Spock.”

“A Vulcan,” he said, obviously interested. An audio transmission came through on his end, and rather than ending the call, he took it right there. “Yes, Commander?... Yes, Commander.” He replaced his earpiece and faced the viewscreen anew. “No one should decide quickly to die, Captain. We give you one of your hours. If you do not surrender your ship at the end of that time, your destruction is certain. We will be open to communication should you wish it.” He was nearly smirking.

“You understand that Starfleet Command has been advised of the situation?” Kirk asked.

“A subspace message will take three weeks to reach Starfleet,” he said. “The decision is yours, Captain. One hour.”

* * *

 

“Mr. Spock, you said you had a theory on why your sensors didn’t pick up the new ships until they were upon us?”

“I believe the Romulans have developed a cloaking device which renders our tracking sensors useless,” he supplied.

“If so, Romulans could attack in Federation territory before we knew they were there—before a vessel or a planet could even begin to get their defenses up.”

“They caught us right enough,” Scotty said.

“That’s a brilliant observation, Mr. Scott. Do you have any other helpful opinions?” Kirk snarked.

“Well, we’ve not got many choices,” he replied.

“We’ve got three. We can fight and be destroyed, or we can destroy the Enterprise ourselves and keep her from the Romulans, or we can… surrender.” His voice went quiet on the last word. “Opinions, gentlemen.”

“If the Enterprise is taken by the Romulans, they’ll know everything there is to know about a starship,” Scotty said. 

Spock crossed the briefing room to stand directly in front of Jim, arms crossed. “If we had not crossed the Neutral Zone—on your order—you would not now need our opinions to support a decision which should never have had to be made.”

McCoy slammed his hands down on the table. “Jim, you ordered us?! You had no authority!”

“Dismissed, doctor,” he said, not breaking his eyes away from Spock.

“Jim—“

He whirled. “I said dismissed.”

The whole room paused, and McCoy himself didn’t move for a long moment. And then he stormed out.

Kirk turned his attention back to Spock, searching his ever-impassive face.

“Bridge to Captain Kirk,” came Uhura’s voice over the intercom. 

“Kirk here.”

“The Romulan vessel is signaling again, sir.”

“Put them on screen.”

“Aye sir.”

The subcommander’s face flashed onto the mini viewer on the center of the conference table. “My commander wishes to speak with you, Captain Kirk.”

“Put him on.”

“The commander wishes to see you and your first officer aboard this vessel. It is felt this matter requires discussion.”

“Why should we walk right into your hands?” Kirk asked.

“Two of my officers will beam aboard your vessel as exchange hostages while you are here.”

“What guarantee do we have that they’ll beam that they’ll beam aboard our ship once we’re on yours?”

“Granted we do not easily trust each other, Captain, but you are the ones who violated our territory. Should it not be we who distrust your motives? However, we agree to simultaneous exchange.”

How incredibly accommodating.

Jim spared one last glance back at Spock. “Give us your transporter coordinates. We’re beaming aboard.”

* * *

 

Two armed guards escorted them to the commander’s office. She was sitting in a chair facing the other way, but spun around when they entered.

She was a short woman with hair swept back in the same way Saavik had kept hers when it had been long. She had piercing gray eyes and an air of oh-so-casual power about her.

“Captain Kirk,” she said, running her eyes over both of them.

“Commander. I’m honored.” He  _smiled._  Spock frowned.

She rose from her chair. “I don’t think so. But we have an important matter to discuss. And your superficial courtesies are an overture to that discussion.” She was standing in front of them now. She nodded at Spock. “You are the first officer?”

He nodded in return. “Spock.”

“I speak first with the captain. You may wait outside.”

He obliged.

“The matter of trespass into Romulan space is one of galactic import, a violation of treaties. Now I ask you simply, what is your mission here?”

“Instrument failure caused navigational error. We were across the Neutral Zone before we realized it, then we were surrounded by your ships before we could get back,” he lied easily.

“A starship, one of the Starfleet’s finest vessels? You’re saying instrument failure as radical as you suggest went unnoticed until you were well past the Neutral Zone?”

He shrugged. “Accidents can happen. Cut off, backup systems can malfunction. We were due for an overhaul two months ago.”

“I see. But you were able to navigate with this malfunction?”

“The error was corrected.”

“But I doubt it will clear you of espionage.”

“We were not spying, Commander.”

“Your language has always been most difficult for me, Captain. Perhaps you have another word for it.”

“You are grossly mistaken if you think that we were there to—“

“Captain, if a Romulan vessel ventured far into Federation territory without good explanation, what would a starbase commander do?” she asked. “You see. It works both ways. I hardly believe you are the injured party.”

She pressed a button on her desk. “Spock. Come in.” The guards ensured that he did.

“The Captain has made his statement.”

He looked over to him. “I understand.”

“I must admit some surprise on seeing you, Spock. We were not aware of Vulcans aboard the Enterprise.”

“Starfleet is not in the habit of informing Romulans of its ships’ personnel,” he said.

“Quite so, yet there are certain ships—certain officers—that are known to us. Your situation appears most interesting.”

“What earns Spock your special interest?” Kirk asked slowly, voice low with implicit threat.

“He is a Vulcan. Our forebears had the same roots and origins. Something you couldn’t understand, Captain. We can appreciate the Vulcans, our distant brothers.”

The way she looked at Spock could certainly be called appreciative, but it was hardly  _brotherly._  Jim felt like snarling.

She moved away from her desk and over to Spock, standing just at the edge of his personal space. “I have heard of Vulcan integrity and personal honor. There’s a well-known saying—or is it a myth—that Vulcans are incapable of lying?”

“It is no myth.”

“Then tell me truthfully now, by your honor as a Vulcan, what was your mission?”

Jim was silently willing him to lie across the bond with all his might, giving detailed instructions on just how to do it.

“I reserve the privilege of speaking only when it will not violate my honor as a Vulcan.”

She gave him a look. “It is unworthy of a Vulcan to resort to subterfuge.”

“You’re being clever, Commander. That is unworthy of a Romulan. It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself.”

Jim jumped as if to physically stop the words from coming out of his mouth, and the commander’s eyes glittered. “Then there is a truth here that remains unspoken.”

“You’ve been told everything. There’s nothing else to say,” Jim said shortly.

“There is Mr. Spock’s unspoken truth,” she said. “You knew of the cloaking device that we have developed. You deliberately violated Romulan space with a blatant spy mission, by order of the Federation—“

“We’ve been all through that, Commander—“

“We have not even begun!” She slammed a hand down on the table emphatically. She took a moment to collect herself. “There’s no force that I can use on a Vulcan that will make him speak. That is a fact. But there are Romulan methods completely effective against humans and human weaknesses.”

And that was where Spock drew the line.

“You would not resort to them, Commander. They would prove ineffective against the captain.”

“Then they will leave him dead, or what might be worse than dead, but I will know your unspoken truths.”

“Let her rant. There’s nothing to say,” Jim said. It was like Spock said. Her methods would be ineffective against him. He could handle it. Chances are, he’s had worse. They would have to get really,  _really_  creative to top what he went through back on Tarsus.

“I cannot allow the captain to be further destroyed,” Spock said. “The strain of command has worn heavily upon him, as have personal circumstances. He has not been himself for several days.”

“That’s a lie!” he shouted. 

“As you can see, Captain Kirk is a highly sensitive and emotional person. I believe he has lost the capacity for rational decision.”

“Shut up, Spock!”

“I am betraying no secrets. The commander’s suspicion that Starfleet ordered the Enterprise to enter the Neutral Zone is unacceptable. Our rapid capture demonstrates its foolhardiness.”

“You’re a filthy liar!”

“I am speaking the truth, for the benefit of the Enterprise and the Federation. I say now and for the record that Captain Kirk ordered the Enterprise across the Neutral Zone on his own initiative and his craving for glory.”

Jim rushed him and had to be held back by the guards. “I’ll kill you for this, you traitor! I’ll kill you!”

Spock’s face gave nothing away.

“I’ll kill you!”

“He is not sane.”

* * *

 

“Attention Enterprise, I am speaking to you from the Romulan flagship. The USS Enterprise, under command of Captain James T. Kirk, is formally charged with espionage. The testimony of First Officer Spock was highly instrumental in confirming this intrusion into Romulan space was not an accident. First Officer Spock’s testimony was specific that your ship was not under orders from Starfleet Command or the Federation Council to perform such a spy mission. It was Captain Kirk who was solely responsible. Since the crew had no choice but to obey orders, the crew will not be held responsible. Therefore, I am ordering Engineer Scott, presently in command of the Enterprise, to follow the Romulan flagship to our home base. You will there be processed and released to Federation command. Until judgment is passed, Captain Kirk will be held in confinement,” the Commander’s voice floated over the shipwide intercom.

Scotty stabbed one of the buttons on the arm of the captain’s chair where he was sitting. “Security, put our two Romulan hostages in the brig. Lieutenant Uhura, get me a channel to that ship.”

“The channel is open Mr. Scott, and you are tied in.”

“This is Lieutenant-Commander Scott. The Enterprise takes no orders except those of Captain Kirk. And we will stay right here until he returns. If you make any attempt to board or commandeer the Enterprise, it will be blown to bits along with as many of you as we can take with us.”

“You humans make a brave noise,” the Commander said. “There are ways to convince you of your errors.” She ended the transmission.

“Did you hear that, you coward?” Jim asked. The guards were still holding him by the arms. “You’ve betrayed everything of value you ever knew. Did you hear the sound of human integrity?”

“Take him to the security room,” the Commander ordered. Kirk was dragged out by the guards, resisting futilely the whole way. She turned her attention back to Spock. “A Vulcan among humans… living, working with them. I would think the situation would be intolerable for you.”

“I am half Vulcan. My mother is a human,” he said.

“To whom is your allegiance, then? Do you call yourself Terran or Vulcan?”

“Vulcan.” The answer was simple.

The commander seemed pleased by it. “How long have you been a Starfleet officer, Spock?”

“Four years,” he said.

“And you serve Captain Kirk,” she said. “Do you like him? Do you like your shipmates?”

“The question is irrelevant.”

“Possibly. But you are subordinate to Captain Kirk’s orders, even to his whims.”

“My duty as an officer is to obey him.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “You are a superior being. Why do you not command?” she asked bluntly.

“I do not desire a ship of my own,” he answered honestly.

“Or is it that no one has offered you, a Vulcan, that opportunity?”

“Such opportunities are extremely rare,” he said.

“For someone of your capabilities and accomplishments, opportunities are made. And will be. I will see to that, if you stop looking on the Federation as the whole universe. It is not, you know.”

“That thought has occasionally crossed my mind,” he said carefully.

She leaned back, a faint smile on her lips. He couldn’t help comparing her to the captain in his mind. Both were so expressive in their movements and with their faces. Both so thoroughly convinced of Spock’s capabilities. “You must have your own ship.”

“Commander, shall we speak plainly?” he asked. “It is who desperately need a ship. You want the Enterprise.”

“Of course,” she admitted. “It would be a great achievement for me to bring home the Enterprise intact. It would broaden the scope of my powers greatly. It would be the achievement of a lifetime.” She paused. “And it would open equal opportunities for you.”

* * *

 

Almost immediately after being tossed in the brig, Jim threw himself against the force field he hadn’t seen but could’ve guessed would be there. The electric shock caused him to convulse and pass out.

Very generously, the Romulans agreed to beam aboard a doctor well-versed in treating humans from the Enterprise.

McCoy buzzed a scanner around Jim’s head, looking as worried and surly as ever. He had been looking for a reason to do this for a while now, ever since Jim started acting funny a few days ago.

It wasn’t a psych eval like he wanted to do, but it was better than nothing. Except that it showed nothing. There was some evidence of electric shock, but other than that, all his brain scans came back clear.

As he said, it wasn’t a psych eval.

“He’ll recover, but he’ll need further attention. Inform your superior,” he said to the guard.

* * *

 

“Attend me,” the commander said to Spock after receiving the message, her voice low and sultry. She led him through the corridors with a confident sway to her hips, which finally made Spock really notice her uniform. It was a skirted version of the Romulan standard, belted at the waist and falling very high up on her leg. Her sash was the dark pink of high rank, same as the subcommander’s, in contrast to the blue of most subordinates. Her boots were black leather and came up above the knee.

“I neglected to mention, I’ll expect you for dinner,” she said. “We have much to discuss.”

He was going to be ordered to her quarters after, he just knew it. “Indeed?” he asked, voice tight.

She looked at him. “Allow me to rephrase. Will you join me for dinner?”

“I am honored, Commander. Are the guards also invited?” he asked just a bit snippily, because it wasn’t really a choice, was it?

With a salute, she dismissed them, and that was… unexpected. Spock continued walking, with the commander at his heels.

“Mr. Spock,” she said. “That corridor is forbidden to all but loyal Romulans.”

He stopped in his tracks. “Of course. I shall obey your restrictions.”

“I hope that one day there will be no need for you to observe any restrictions.”

“It would be illogical to assume that all conditions remain stable.”

She smiled, and led him to Kirk’s holding cell.

The captain was slumped over on his bunk, a glazed look on his face. He hardly seemed like a real person, much less the brilliant, exuberant captain that Spock knew.

“Are you the doctor?” the commander asked McCoy.

“McCoy. Chief Medical Officer,” he said, rising.

“Captain Kirk’s condition?”

“Well, you can see for yourself, he’s mentally depressed, physically weak, disoriented, displays feelings of persecution and rebellion.”

“Then by your own standards of normality, this man is not fully competent,” the commander said.

“No, not now,” McCoy admitted.

“Mr. Spock has stated that he believe the captain had no authority or order to cross the Neutral Zone. Could this mental incapacity have afflicted him earlier?”

“Yes, it’s possible.”

“Mr. Spock, the doctor has now confirmed your testimony as to the mental state of your captain. He was and is unfit to continue in command of the Enterprise. That duty has now fallen on you. Are you ready to exercise that function?”

“I am ready.”

“Spock, I don’t believe it. There’s no price you could pay that would make him sell out,” Bones said vehemently.

“The matter is not open for discussion, doctor,” Spock said. 

“What do you mean the matter’s not open for—“

“That’s enough, doctor,” the commander said. “As a physician, your duty is to save lives. Mr. Spock’s duty is to lead the Enterprise and its crew to a safe haven.”

“There is no alternative, doctor. The safety of the crew is now the paramount issue. It is misguided loyalty to resist any further,” Spock said.

“You traitor,” Jim breathed. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.” His voice was weak and raspy, his movements sluggish, but he managed to rush Spock nonetheless as if intending to strangle him.

Spock shoved a hand onto the captain’s face, effectively freezing him and knocking him backward.

McCoy rushed to his side. “What did you do? What did you do?!”

“I was unprepared for his attack. I instinctively used the Vulcan Death Grip.”

McCoy whipped out a scanner and ran it over Kirk’s prone form. “Your instincts are still good, Mr. Spock. The captain is dead.”


	17. The Enterprise Incident, Part 2

The captain’s body was brought back aboard the Enterprise and laid out on an exam table in sickbay. Christine was giving him one last dumbfounded look when he opened his eyes.

“Doctor! Dr. McCoy!” she screamed.

Jim hurriedly closed his eyes again. Nurse Chapel was still screaming for the doctor.

“I left orders that no one was allowed in here,” Bones said.

“But he’s alive!  _Alive!”_

“Well, now that you know it, you might as well assist me. Hand me the physio-simulator.”

“But he was dead. Their doctors certified that he was dead,” she said, handing him the machine despite her shock at seeing a corpse open its eyes right there in sickbay.

“Spock gave him a nerve pinch to simulate death.”

“Then Mr. Spock isn’t a traitor, and you knew that all the time and you didn’t—“

“I didn’t know it until I beamed aboard the Romulan ship. Jim and Spock were operating under Federation orders.”

As they were talking, the captain’s vital signs began to rise from dangerously low to human normal, color and warmth returning to his face. He blinked and worked his jaw, stretching out stiff muscles.

“My neck feels like it’s been twisted off,” he complained.

“That’s the Vulcan Death Grip for you,” McCoy said gruffly.

“There’s no such thing as the Vulcan Death Grip,” Chapel said.

“Ah, but the Romulans don’t know that,” Jim gave her a shit-eating grin. “Sure fooled the doctors.”

“You took a big chance that they didn’t start an autopsy,” Bones griped.

Jim ignored him and turned back to Chapel. “As far as the rest of the crew is concerned, I’m still dead.”

“Why?”

“That’s what this whole masquerade was about—to keep the Enterprise and the Federation off the hook.”

“So if anything went wrong, you would be the one to blame,” Bones said. His legacy would be being the idiot captain who went insane and crossed the Neutral Zone before getting killed by his own first officer. The youngest captain in the ‘Fleet who couldn’t handle the pressure.

“Bones, I want you to prepare for surgery.”

“What for?”

Jim grinned.

* * *

 

The commander led Spock into—sure enough—her private quarters.

“I’ve had special Vulcan dishes prepared for you. I hope they’re to your liking,” she said about a tray full of food laid out.

Spock felt sick and decided he absolutely would not be eating a bite of them.

He played the part.

“I am very flattered, Commander. There’s no doubt that the cuisine aboard your vessel is far superior to that of the Enterprise,” he approached her. “It is, indeed, a very powerful recruiting inducement.”

Was that reasonable? Was he laying it on too thick? It was just food. He literally couldn’t care less.

“We have other inducements,” she handed him a glass of Romulan ale. He took it carefully. She toasted, and he pretended to sip some while she drank deeply. He raised an eyebrow.

* * *

 

Jim beamed aboard the ship in full Romulan dress stolen from one of their captives. His ears and eyebrows had been changed and heavy makeup had been applied (he’d stolen it from Spock). Even his hair had been dyed a few shades darker.

A guard in the purple of a slightly lower rank spotted him instantly, and Jim saluted. “I have just effected an escape from the Federation vessel. I have important information for Subcommander Tal. Where is he?”

“He is in control central, centurion.”

“Good. I shall remember to mention your alertness to him. Return to your duty.”

“Thank you, centurion.” He saluted.

* * *

 

Spock’s plan to not eat or drink anything had not lasted long, he thought, as the commander refilled his glass with Saurian brandy and they both drank, though her a bit more enthusiastically than him. She had put him in an awkward, watched position where refusing to eat would be highly suspicious. He allegedly trusted her at this point. Though he noticed that she herself didn’t touch any of the food.

He hoped vaguely that it wasn’t laced with truth serum or poison or anything.

“You have nothing in Starfleet to which to return. I off—“

Spock raised an eyebrow.

“We,” she said diplomatically. “—offer you an alternative. We will find a place for you, if you wish it.”

“A place?” he asked. 

“Mhmm,” she smiled. “With me.”

He swallowed down another sip of brandy.

“Romulan women are not like Vulcan females. We are not dedicated to… pure logic, and the sterility of non-emotion,” she punctuated the statement with another long drink and shifted so that she was laying back on the corner couch, propped up by one elbow, causing her skirt to ride up even higher. “Our people are warriors. Often savage. But we are also many other pleasant things.”

Did she really think his own culture was so abhorrent to him?

“I was not aware of that aspect of Romulan society.”

“As a Vulcan, you will study it. As a human, you would find ways to appreciate it.”

Spock leaned back to rest on a pillow, mimicking her position so that they were both on their sides, mere inches apart. “Please believe me. I do appreciate it.”

“I am so glad,” her eyes flickered down to his lips. “Now, one final step to make the occasion complete. You will lead a small party of Romulans aboard the Enterprise, and there you will take your rightful place as its commander, and you will lead the ship to a Romulan port, with my flagship at its side.”

He would not do that.

He nodded. “Yes, of course. But not just this moment. An hour from now will do even better, would it not, Commander?”

“Yes. Yes, it will, Mr. Spock,” she said. “You do know I have a first name.”

“I was beginning to wonder.”

“Would you like to hear it?” She leaned in and whispered, close enough that her lips brushed his ear.  _“Selevo.”_

“How rare. And how beautiful,” Spock pulled back. “But so incongruous when spoken by a soldier.”

“If you will give me a moment, the soldier will transform herself into a woman.” She stood and left the room.

Spock whipped out his communicator and flipped it open. “Spock to Captain Kirk. Captain, are you prepared to beam over?”

“I’m already on board, Spock. Do you have the information?”

“Yes, Captain. The cloaking device is in an area near the commander’s quarters. It is closely guarded and off-limits to all but authorized personnel.”

“Spock, I’ll get the cloaking device. Will you be able to get back to the Enterprise without attracting their attention?”

“Unknown, Captain. At present, I am rather heavily—“

The commander reappeared at the door and he snapped the communicator shut behind his back. She was wearing a tight-fitting evening gown that hung of one shoulder in a pattern of swirling blue and white.

“Is my attire now more appropriate, Mr. Spock?” She came to stand just at the edge of his personal space.

“Commander, your attire is not only more appropriate, it should actually stimulate our conversation.” He held up the ta’al and she repeated the gesture. He pressed their hands fully together.

The captain did things like this for the sake of missions all the time. Spock could handle this. If Jim could do it, then he could to.

There was a human term for a spy tasked with distracting the enemy in this manner. It was ‘honeypot.’

Spock was a honeypot.

His hand slid over to the back of hers, fingers fluttering along it in short strokes.

Soon their hands were on each other’s faces, hers over his meld points and his on her lips. He knew that was his human side showing through, to seek out the lips.

One hour.

He wished Jim was here.

“It’s hard to believe that I can be so moved by the touch of an alien hand,” the commander said. 

“I must confess that I, too, am moved emotionally,” he said, knowing that was exactly what she wanted to hear. “I know it is illogical.”

She tipped her face back to his ministrations. “Spock, we mustn’t question what we truly feel.” Her lips brushed against his fingers as she spoke. “Accept what is happening between us, even as I do.”

Her intercom beeped. “Commander. Permission to enter?”

“Not now, Tal,” she said.

“It is urgent, Commander.”

She wrapped a hand around his completely and for a second he thought she would kiss it in the human way and—but she didn’t, and she walked away. “Enter.”

Tal strode in with two guards. “Commander, we have intercepted an alien transmission.”

“Locate its source.”

“We have, Commander. This room.”

Might as well get this over with. Spock stepped forward and held out his communicator for them to see. A confession without words.

“The cloaking device,” Selevo said. “Bring him.”

She all but ran out the door, her men scurrying to keep up.

* * *

 

Kirk wandered through the corridors, hurriedly looking for one that was overly guarded. He soon found it.

“Centurion, have you clearance for this area? I do not recognize you.” The guard pulled his weapon and pointed it at him.

Let it never be said that Romulans don’t get to the point.

“There’s an intruder aboard. Has someone tried to gain entrance there?”

“I must see your authorization—“

“Over there!” Jim screamed and pointed. He attacked when the guard looked away, landing several well-placed hits to pressure points like Spock had shown him. The guard fell down, and he was out.

Jim set to hacking the lock mechanism and made quick work of it. He stepped into the room cautiously. In the center was a device with a huge glowing orb. The room didn’t contain much else.

Subtlety: not a Romulan strong suit.

A guard he hadn’t seen came up from behind him. “Halt! Don’t move.” He pointed his weapon right at Kirk’s chest. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“There’s an enemy spy aboard. He’ll be after the cloaking device.”

“Drop your weapon.”

He did.

The Romulan knelt down to pick it up and Kirk kicked the gun out of his hand when he looked away. The man hadn’t gotten hold of his weapon yet. Kirk kicked him hard under the chin and sent the man sprawling back, slamming his head on the floor when he went down.

Jim carefully removed the cloaking device from its machinery and pulled out his comm. “Scotty, energize!”

The Romulans burst into the room, Tal rushing to his fallen guard and checking his pulse. He was fine. “Commander, the cloaking device is gone.”

“Full alert. Search all decks,” she snapped.

“That will be profitless, Commander. I do not believe you will find it,” Spock said.

“You must be mad.”

“II assure you I am quite sane.”

“Why would you do this to me? What are you that you could do this?”

“First Officer of the United Starship Enterprise.”

She slapped him.

“What is your present form of execution?” he asked.

* * *

 

_Captain’s log, stardate 5027.4. Commander Scott has less than fifteen minutes to install the Romulans’ cloaking device and get it working. I hope Mr. Spock can buy us the time we need._

“Captain!”

”You’re alive!”

“They said you’d been killed, sir.” A chorus of calls greeted him when he walked onto the bridge, taking the conn from Sulu.

“The report was premature,” he said.

“Captain, your ears. What happened?” Chekov asked.

“We’ll discuss it later. Sulu, lay in a course for home. Chekov, take the sensors. Spock is still aboard the Romulan flagship; I want his body readings pinpointed and isolated.”

The crew didn’t move for a second, staring at him.

“That was not a request, people.”

“Aye sir.

“Aye sir.”

* * *

 

They were back in the commander’s quarters for what Spock hoped would be the last time. “Return to your station, Subcommander. The boarding action on the Enterprise will begin with my command. If they resist, destroy her.”

He saluted and left. Selevo looked Spock up and down. “Execution of state criminals is both painful and unpleasant. I believe the details are unnecessary. The sentence will be carried out immediately after the charges have been recorded.”

“I demand the right of statement first.”

She nodded a bit bitterly. Of course. “You understand Romulan tradition well. The right is granted.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I shall not require much time, no more than… twenty minutes, I should say.”

“It should take less time than that to find your ally who stole the cloaking device. You will not die alone,” she promised menacingly.

She flipped the recording device on, and Spock was suddenly grateful for that longwindedness of his the doctor always complained about.

* * *

 

“… The oath I swore as a Starfleet officer is both specific and binding. As long as I wear the uniform, my duty is to protect the security of the Federation. Clearly, your new cloaking device is a threat to that security. I carried out my duty.”

“Everyone carries out their duty. You state the obvious, Spock.”

“There is no regulation regarding the content of my statement.” He threw out a wild guess. “May I continue?”

“Very well. Your twenty minutes are almost up.”

* * *

 

“Mr. Chekov, there’s only one Vulcan aboard that ship. He should be easy enough to locate.”

“Romulans and Vulcans appear to read almost exactly alike. There is just a slight difference which is due to—got him, sir.”

“Feed the coordinates to the transporter room on the double. Have them prepare to beam him aboard on my signal.”

“Captain Kirk. Mr. Scott is on the intercom for you, sir,” Uhura said.

“Go ahead, Scotty,” he said as he pressed a button on his chair.

“I got that device installed, but bless me if I know whether it’s going to work. It’s the biggest guess I’ve ever made.”

“Stand by, Scotty.”

“Sir, the transporter room has the coordinates and is ready for beaming,” Chekov said.

“Transporter room, beam Mr. Spock aboard.”

* * *

 

“Beyond the historic tradition of Vulcan loyalty, there is also the combined Romulan-Vulcan history of obedience to duty—“

The slight hum of imminent beaming began.

Selevo’s eyes flashed with anger and she ran around the desk and grabbed onto him.

* * *

 

“Transporter room reports Mr. Spock aboard, sir, and the Romulan commander.”

“The commander?” What a pleasant surprise.

“Aye sir,” Uhura smiled.

He laughed. “Alright! Have them report to the bridge on the double. Mr. Sulu, take us away from the Romulans. Warp factor nine.”

“Holding at warp nine, sir.”

“Scotty, you better switch on that device.”

“I did, sir. It’s not working.”

The commander and Spock appeared on the bridge along with a security ensign. She was smirking. “I would give you credit, Captain, for getting this far, but you will be dead in a moment and the credit would be gratuitous.”

“Lieutenant, open a channel to the Romulan vessel.”

“I have Subcommander Tal, sir,” Uhura said.

“Establish two-way visual contact.”

“We have you under our weapons, Enterprise. You cannot escape,” Tal said.

“This is Captain Kirk, hold your fire. We have your commander aboard,” he said. 

“Commander?”

“Destroy this vessel! I gave you a direct command!”

“Break contact!”

“Tal!”

Jim went back over to his chair’s intercom. “Scotty, we’re running out of time.”

“Captain, I’m working as fast as I can.”

“You see, Captain?” Selevo asked. “Your effort is being wasted.”

Somehow she looked more intimidating in her evening gown than she did in her military uniform and Jim decided that just wasn’t fair.

Also why was she wearing an evening gown?

“Mr. Spock, distance from the Romulan vessel?” he asked.

“150,000 kilometers, Captain, and closing very rapidly.”

“Stand by, phasers,” he said. “Commander, you’ll forgive me if I put up a fight.”

“Of course. It’s expected,” she said.

“100,000 kilometers. They should commence firing at us within the next 12.7 seconds,” Spock announced.

“Scotty…” Jim said.

“It’s ready now, Captain, but I don’t know whether our circuits can handle this alien contraption.”

“Pull the switch.”

“It’ll likely overload.”

“Throw the switch,” he said in his most commanding tone of voice, projecting confidence he didn’t have.

Scotty did as he was told, and the Enterprise became invisible.

“Mr. Sulu, come about. 318 mark 7.”

“318 mark 7, sir. Executing.”

They watched as the angle of the viewscreen shifted and the Romulans fired into nothingness along their last known course. The commander closed her eyes as if pained.

“The cloaking device is working perfectly, and the commander has informed me that even Romulan sensors cannot track a vessel so equipped.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spock,” he said. “Cancel red alert.” He turned to Selevo. “We’ll drop you off at the nearest Federation outpost.”

“You are very generous, Captain. If I may be taken to your brig, I will take my place as your prisoner.”

She expected to still be treated like a warrior. To be given the dignity of a respectable, formidable enemy.

Jim shook his head dismissively. “Mr. Spock will have the honor of escorting you to your quarters.”

She bowed her head slightly, “Captain.”

He returned the gesture. “Commander.”

* * *

 

“Sickbay to bridge.”

“What is it, Bones?”

“I’d like you to report to sickbay.”

“What for?” he asked as Spock returned to the bridge.

“Well, you’re due in surgery. I’m going to bob your ears.”

Jim’s mouth formed an ‘o’ and he reached up and touched his newly pointed ears. He had forgotten about them, to be honest.

“Captain, please go,” Spock said. “Somehow the effect is unsettling when on a human.”

“Well, are ya comin’ Jim, or do you wanna go through life looking like a copy of your husband?” Bones teased.

“I’m on my way,” he said. He paused by the turbolift, looking back at Spock and giving his ears one last touch. The bridge crew snickered.

* * *

 

The captain had not even deigned to confine her to her quarters. Selevo wandered the ship, trying to understand and memorize as much of it as she could. It wasn’t hopeless. She hadn’t committed any crimes, so there would be no reason not to allow her extradition back to the Romulan Empire. Her knowledge could be invaluable once she got back.

She was banned from security and engineering, however, and that made finding truly useful information a bit difficult. She had already tried and failed to seduce or sneak her way in.

She drew obvious stares from the crew, who avoided her and wouldn’t meet her eyes, something that she found pleased her to no end. Maybe the captain didn’t, or pretended like he didn’t, but his crew certainly did. She was a Romulan, and she was feared.

She was getting to the point where she was pretty satisfied with herself when she saw her. A little girl with a mess of brown curls and clear gray eyes. She had green-tinted skin and pointed ears, but was wearing Terran clothing and listening intently to a human boy with a bandaged nose.

“Saavik,” she gasped. The child’s attention snapped to her instantaneously, and fear settled over her entire body.

“Hello, Mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The past two chapters were based on the TOS episode The Enterprise incident, and the last one reads way differently if you know what's going on versus if you don't. Some of the dialogue was changed just slightly to fit this fic better, and a few scenes were cut, including that turbolift one that was just weird.
> 
> The commander's name is completely made up, as it was never given in canon as far as I know.
> 
> The idea of having the Romulan commander be Saavik's mother comes from lieutenant-sapphic on tumblr.


	18. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim and Spock make fumbling attempts at figuring out how to parent.

“Shouldn’t you be dead?” Selevo snapped.

Saavik glued her eyes to the floor and said nothing. Tommy glanced between the two of them in confusion, placing a protective hand on Saavik’s arm.

“I mean,” Selevo smoothed over. “How is it that you managed to survive?”

She still did not respond.

“Answer me, 528.”

“Jim rescued me.” Her voice was so quiet even Selevo’s Romulan hearing could barely pick it up.

“Jim?” she asked. “Captain James Kirk?”

She nodded.

“And how long ago was this?”

“Seventy-one days ago.”

“Why are you still on board the Enterprise then?”

“’Cause…” She seemed to be struggling against herself, against her conditioning to obey the commander. “’Cause they adopted me.”

Something in that sentence made her blood run cold. She had a bad feeling about this. “Who adopted you?”

“Jim and Spock.”

“My mommy says I’m not s’posed to talk to strangers,” Tommy said. “Are you a stranger?”

“No. Saavik knows me. I am her mother.”

“Oh.” He still seemed uncertain.

“Saavik and I have not seen each other in quite a while. Perhaps we could go somewhere more private and catch up with one another,” she said. Saavik looked stricken with fear, and cast a panicked glance at Tommy, who tightened his grip on her arm.

Selevo rolled her eyes and grabbed Saavik’s other arm, yanking her roughly away.

“Hey!” said Tommy, though Saavik herself was silent, paralyzed. Some of the crewmembers glanced their direction at his protest. Selevo steeled her face into an emotionless façade.

“I am displeased with the emotional transference you have caused my daughter. Do not engage in physical contact with her again,” she said loudly. The crew returned to their business.

Selevo dragged her away to the arboretum she had passed along the way, figuring it had to be at least somewhat more secluded than the crowded hallways. Sure enough, the place was empty when she got there. Perfect.

She knew exactly what sort of threat this girl posed to her. She was an eyewitness. If she testified against her, Selevo would never see home again and she would spend the rest of her days rotting in a Federation prison somewhere.

Kirk and Spock’s daughter.  _Kirk and Spock’s_ daughter.

No one played her the fool. She wanted to hurt Spock, hurt him where it counted, hurt him in a way he would blame himself for. Hurt him in a way he would never get over.

And she knew exactly how to do it.

She wrapped both hands around Saavik’s throat and squeezed with all her considerable strength.

She would throw the body in the incinerator afterwards. There would be no evidence. The child would be missing and only presumed dead. No one would ever know.

She was making cute little choking sounds, scratching at Selevo’s arms, pupils almost filling her entire eyes.

A gasp and then nothing.

* * *

 

“Miss Saavik, are you okay?” Chekov rushed to her, holstering his phaser and pushing the commander’s limp body off of the child from where it was crushing her.

Saavik gasped and coughed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She nodded.

“Come, I will call your fathers and take you to sickbay,” he said, helping her up. She stood on shaky feet, and he changed his mind, deciding to carry her.

* * *

 

The two men burst into sickbay mere seconds after Saavik had been settled into a biobed. Jim raced to her side instantly, scanning her for injuries and biting his lip at the green handprints around her thin little throat. He threw his arms around her in a tight hug.

“Oh my god Saavik I’m so sorry I never should have let her roam free I should have put her straight in the brig instantly this is all my fault I am  _so_  sorry nothing like this will ever happen again I swear to you I’m going to—“

“Jim,” Spock laid a hand on his arm.

“Right,” he cleared his throat, hoping he hadn’t overwhelmed her. “Right. Are you okay, sweetheart?”

She tried to speak, but found that her voice wouldn’t come. She settled on a nod instead. Jim’s eyes filled with sadness that quickly turned to burning anger. By silent agreement, Spock sat down by Saavik’s bedside and Jim went over to get a statement from Chekov.

“Tell me exactly what happened. Don’t you dare leave a single detail out,” he commanded, and his voice sounded threatening even to him.

“I-I was in the hallway when I saw Saavik and a little boy talking to the commander. She asked Saavik why she wasn’t dead, and I thought ‘that’s suspicious,’ so I stuck around to listen to the rest of their conversation. Just-just in case, because the commander seemed so—I don’t normally spy on the crew, I swear, it’s just—“

“What happened next, Mr. Chekov.”

“Um,” he laughed nervously. “She started asking questions about her. The commander, I mean, obviously, why would Saavik—mm. Anyway. Saavik seemed scared half to death, and the commander kept asking her things like how long she had been on the Enterprise, who had adopted her, things like that. She said…”

Jim folded his arms impatiently. Chekov swallowed.

“She said she was Saavik’s mother. She took her away from the little boy. They went to the arboretum, and I followed. Just to-to ensure Saavik’s safety, I wasn’t doing anything else, I swear. And then I got in there, and the commander was choking her! So I phased her, took Saavik here, called you, and called security to have her removed,” he finished confidently.

“I see,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. Chekov.” And he stormed out of sickbay and headed straight to the brig.

Selevo was sitting upright on her bunk, posture rigid, eyes fixed firmly ahead on nothing. She turned when she saw Jim coming, a wicked smile crossing her face.

“Did you like my thank-you present?” she asked. “I know such things are customary for humans when a great favor has been done.”

“Listen, the only thing stopping me from killing you is that it would get me sent back to jail and then Saavik wouldn’t have one of her parents for years.” The guards looked mildly concerned at that, but wisely decided to mind their own business.

“If you truly cared for her, you would find a way around the law to seek your vengeance. You take the coward’s way out,” she said.

“No I don’t,” he promised. “I’m going to see you rot in prison for the rest of your very long, long life. Maximum security. I’m sure you’ll find the people there just lovely. And I’m sure they’ll love you. People who mess with kids always go over well.”

“If you take me to court, I’ll sue for custody,” she said. “Saavik is my biological daughter. As far as I’m concerned, she was kidnapped—by you. My claim is legitimate and it is a strong one.”

“When we found her she was half-starved and abandoned in an underground cell.” Jim was practically shaking. “You’ll lose.”

“Maybe so,” she conceded. “But before that, your precious Saavik will be forced to face me, her greatest fear, day in and day out for however long the case runs.”

“You’re bargaining for the rest of your life on the basis of one month,” he folded his arms.

“One month can feel like an eternity to a child so young. And I’m a wealthy woman, Captain Kirk. A commander in the Romulan Empire. A good enough lawyer can keep you tangled up in court for up to a year. How will Saavik feel then?”

“You’ll pay for this,” Jim swore. “One way or another, you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.” 

* * *

Bones gently applied a salve to Saavik’s neck, which was starting to going from the green of close by blood to a darker shade of bruising. She winced a few times when he touched especially sensitive parts.

Chapel brought her a pale green scarf to wrap around her neck. It would deflect stares and it was soft. She said she could keep it.

Saavik hugged her.

Spock stayed at her side the entire time and she was grateful for that, hanging onto the sleeve of his uniform for comfort. When everything finally calmed down, he sat in a chair next to her biobed and laid a hand on her wrist.

“You are upset,” he said. She didn’t respond, still unable to talk.

“I can—There are ways of… easing that,” he said. She cocked an eyebrow—a gesture she had picked up from him.

He held his hand near his own meld points to explain, and she nodded.

His fingertips brushed the side of her face and their consciousnesses crashed together. Her mind was sharp, almost spiky, colorful and solid and determined. She was strong, stronger than she realized, and a force that almost hurt Spock to meld with.

He projected a sense of calm and being soothed, a balm going over mental wounds. She was hurting, the equivalent of scared, quiet crying up in her head.  _Mother. Mother Mother Mother Mother Mother. Fear and sadness crying screaming why why is she here why would she hurt me where was Jim why didn’t he stop her_ _why did this happen what did I_ _do wrong what’s going on what’s going to happen now_ _—_

He pushed quiet and calm and safety at her, dousing her mind in it, like putting on a bandaid, like cleaning out a wound.  _Safe and good and not your fault, won’t happen again, so sorry, will protect you love you you are safe won’t happen again you are safe you are protected you did nothing wrong and I am here now._

Slowly, slowly, she calmed down the words soaked through her mind until she believed them. Spock waited until she accepted it, until she was calm and the meld was stable, before breaking the contact.

“You are concerned that the commander will take you away from us,” he said. “Do not be. Jim and I will not permit it.”

She still looked uncertain.

“There is a Terran proverb that I am familiar with. I believe it is relevant to your situation. ‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.’ The ties you choose are stronger than the ties of biology.”

She wrapped her arms around him in a soft hug, and through the contact he heard  _I choose you._

* * *

 

Jim collapsed into a chair in Bones’ office, long after Saavik had been sent home with stern order to drink some warm milk and take a nap.

“What do I do, Bones?” he asked. “She’s threatening to sue for custody if we bring her to trial for what she did.”

“What? She can’t do that!”

“She can and she will.”

“That’s not how the law works. What she did to those kids… a public defender takes her to court no matter what. Saavik has a choice whether she wants to testify or not.”

“I know how it works, Bones, but that’s not what she means. Only the senior bridge crew even know what really happened on that mission. And only you, me, Spock, and Chekov know that she was involved. She wants us to keep it quiet. She goes back to her Empire and it’s like it never happened.”

“Oh,” Bones said. “Shit, kid.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d Spock have to say about all of this?”

“He doesn’t know yet. You’re the first person I’ve told.”

“What? Jim, he’s your husband. Ah, before you go all ‘fake marriage’ on me, it doesn’t matter if the marriage is fake, you and him raising a kid together—that’s real. You need to be communicating.”

He heard what was left unspoken. How it was all too easy to screw up a co-parent relationship. How Bones had blown it and now he got to see Joanna almost never. How he wanted Jim to learn from his mistakes so neither he nor Spock got hurt at the end of this. How he wouldn’t play that card unless he thought it was serious.

“Why haven’t you told him?”

Jim sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “I guess I don’t wanna hear how it’s illogical to put Saavik’s very emotional feelings above following the law.”

Bones was quiet for a moment. “You don’t know he’s gonna say that.” Jim shot him a look. “God, kid. I don’t know what to say. You wanna drink?”

* * *

 

It was way too many drinks later when Jim came stumbling back to his and Spock’s quarters. And you know what, so what? He was a grown man. He was allowed to get drunk every once in a while. It had been a long day at the end of a high-stress mission. And he’d been being really good, too. This was the first time he’d gotten drunk since adopting Saavik. It wasn’t like he was coming home black-out drunk every single weekend or anything like that.

It was past her bedtime anyway, and the walls between quarters were soundproofed. She wouldn’t even know. He wasn’t a bad example. He was a good father.

After the fourth time of the door not recognizing his voice activation sequence, Spock took pity and opened it for him. “Thanks,” Jim slurred. He pushed his way past and into the room.

“You are inebriated,” Spock observed. Jim laughed.

“Yeah. Yeah, Spock, I’m imbebre—ineby—drunk. I’m real drunk.”

“I read Saavik a chapter of  _Alice in Wonderland_  and put her to bed in a timely manner. She was given dinner, and her physical condition has improved significantly since the afternoon. Once she regained the ability to speak, she inquired as to your whereabouts. I did not know what to tell her.”

And now Jim felt like shit. “I w’s gettin’ drunk,” he said. “Listen. Listen, I got somethin’ to tell you. ‘S important.” He grabbed Spock by the shoulders.

“Indeed?”

“The commander is Saavik’s mom.”

“I know.”

Jim froze, then barked a laugh. “’Course you know. You’re Spock. You know everything,” he said. His expression sobered. “She’s gonna sue for custody unless we keep our mouths shut about what she did.”

Now it was Spock’s turn to freeze. “Indeed?” It sounded tighter this time. “And what was your response?”

“Ha’en’t given her a answer yet. Wan’ed to talk wi’ you first.”

“If you would like my input, I suggest you do not concede to her demands. This will only encourage further repetition of the behavior.”

“But what about Saavik? Don’t want her to go through all that. It’d suck.”

He paused. “I had not considered the emotional aspects. Her wellbeing, of course, must be the ultimate priority.”

It took a while for Jim’s addled brain to translate that out of Vulcan-ese. A wide grin split his face. “I was so worried you’d say the opp’site. God, I could kiss you right now.”

Spock stiffened in his arms. “I would not recommend it, Captain.”

Jim burst out laughing and moved back a few steps to reassure the Vulcan. He shucked off his boots and collapsed on top of the bed fully clothed. “G’night, Spock.”

“Goodnight, Jim.”

* * *

 

Spock and Jim had agreed not to trouble Saavik with the matter. Spock found it just as distasteful and unsettling as Jim did, though he achieved emotional regulation through intensive meditation rather than alcohol consumption.

However, the concerning nature of the subject was having unforeseen consequences. Spock found himself distracted by it.

Saavik saw his thoughts on it in a meld during their next meditation lesson.

“What?” she cried. “But that’s not what I want at all!”

“Explain,” he said.

“Mother hurt me,” she said. “She has to be hurt back.”

“Sending her to prison for her crimes would be a long and involved process.”

“She hurt me.” And Spock knew that she wasn’t talking about the attempted strangulation.

In the end, it was as simple as that.


	19. Confidential

The three of them walked into the brig. Spock had told Jim about what had occurred and Saavik’s decision immediately, and they decided to waste no time setting things in motion. And also to communicate with Saavik more.

“I gather you have come to a decision?” Selevo asked, sitting up.

“Saavik has something she wants to say to you,” Jim said.

“You’re gonna go to jail for the rest of forever!”

Selevo paled, and Spock explained smoothly, “It appears that you have forgotten the full details of Saavik’s heritage. She is Romulan as well as Vulcan, and she has an emotional desire for vengeance that she is more than willing to act upon.”

Jim leaned in and grinned viciously. “Get ready, bitch.”

* * *

 

“Sir, I’m calling you about important information that has come up regarding Operation Hellguard,” Jim said.

Admiral Nogura did a quick record search of the unfamiliar title and frowned. “That mission’s above my clearance level,” he said. “I’m going to have to refer you directly to the Federation Council.”

He switched the comlink before Jim had time to prepare. Suddenly he was staring into the faces of the most powerful people of every species in the Federation.

“I have important information about Operation Hellguard,” he repeated. “We got one of them.”

That caused a wave of shuffling and murmuring. “Hellguard? Wasn’t that the one inside the Neutral Zone…?”

“With the Vulcan children, yes.”

“You say you caught one of them? One of who?”

“One of the Romulans responsible for the poaching, torture, and slaughter of an endangered species,” he said, eyes hard. The Council stilled at his words.

“And how did thou manage to capture this Romulan?” T’Pau asked. Jim wasn’t sure if he should be grateful for the familiar face or even more worried.

“She was accidentally beamed aboard during our last mission, Operation Invisibility.” More shuffling as almost everyone pulled up the report on the mission that he’d just finished and sent off. “She’s a Romulan commander by the name of Selevo. Her involvement was confirmed by an eyewitness.”

“What eyewitness? Why do you have Vulcan survivors still aboard your ship? Shouldn’t they have been sent off to the colony a while ago?” the Andorian ambassador asked.

“They were. All except one, whom my first officer and I adopted,” he said. That got quite the reaction. Mostly surprised or vaguely positive, if Jim was reading the crowd right—and he usually did.

“Report to the nearest starbase immediately. We’ll have the other survivors flown in on the Valiant. They should arrive soon after you do.”

And then the trial would begin.

“Oh, and Kirk? Keep this quiet. That mission was highly classified and broke a ton of treaties. The last thing we need is this leaking to the press.”

* * *

 

Sure enough, Selevo stuck to her word and filed a suit for custody. Jim and Spock had a lengthy debate over who to hire as their lawyer for it. Spock said that a Vulcan lawyer would be better trained in constructing a logical argument, and while it was true that Vulcan law was an unparalleled field, Jim insisted that a custody suit had too many emotional aspects and a lawyer who ignored that would lose no matter what.

In the end, they compromised with a human lawyer who trained on Vulcan. On Spock’s dime, unfortunately, much to Jim’s chagrin. He wouldn’t let him chip in. Something about it being an affront to his house and Vulcan honor or something.

Whatever. Who was Kirk to look a gift horse in the mouth? The guy could clearly afford it, could afford the best actually, and ensured that they got it. Which, whatever. He wasn’t going to let his pride interfere with how this case was run. This was too important to protest over.

Starfleet had put them up in a single suit for them to stay in, with the assumption that Spock and Jim would share a bed and Saavik would take the pullout couch. The adults had balked at that, only to be informed that if they wanted an additional room, they would have to pay for it out of pocket. Spock had readily done so, upgrading them to three much nicer adjoining rooms and this time Jim did protest, vehemently, but Spock wasn’t hearing it.

And it was sort of weirdly hot to see Spock flashing his credit card around spending money on him. But then, Jim thought everything Spock did was weirdly hot these days. Ever since that night on New Vulcan, he had been very keenly aware of his first officer’s body and what he was doing at any given moment.

It was just because of the bond, of course. And thankfully, it was purely physical. Jim didn’t have any feelings for him. He had just recently that Spock was attractive and he was appreciating it. It would pass eventually.

They had three days before the custody trial began and two weeks before the Hellguard trial. The public defender wanted to go over the case with them and get Saavik especially prepared to testify, but their private lawyer got first dibs with the more immediate case.

The lawyer was a brusque elderly woman with spiky white hair and a heavyset frame. She was taking a drag off a cigarette when they walked into her office.

“Can you put that out?” Jim asked. “We got a kid here.”

“Sorry,” she shrugged, snuffing the cigarette out in an ashtray. Her voice was deep and gravelly. “So. Before we begin, I want to hear things from your side of the story. Go. Present your case, as it were.”

“Mother is a bad, bad lady and I don’t like her,” Saavik piped up.

“Why is she a bad lady?” the lawyer asked.

“She hurt me.”

“She hurt you? Was she abusive?”

“Did you read the file we sent you?” Jim asked impatiently.

“No. I never read the file before meeting with the client. Alters your perspective.”

They had had to go about finding a lawyer in a very careful manner. The only information allowed for public release was that it was a custody battle between two adoptive fathers from Starfleet and a biological mother who happened to be a Romulan warrior. Once a lawyer had been selected, Starfleet swooped in with a truckload of confidentiality agreements and threats of jail time and a revoked license and only then had they released the mission report to her.

“Saavik was a research experiment on a planet in the Romulan Neutral Zone known as Hellguard. She and thirteen other survivors were rescued by the Enterprise as part of a covert operations mission. They are half-Vulcan half-Romulan hybrids created for the purpose of experimenting with their telepathy and the possibility of mind control. The woman who issued this legal suit against us is Saavik’s Romulan parent, who played a role in orchestrating the proceedings on Hellguard. She issued the suit as part of an ultimatum she gave to Captain Kirk: either we keep quiet about her involvement in the experiments, or she would attempt to take Saavik away,” Spock explained.

Now she got out the file and began skimming through it, eyes darting back and forth. She shushed Jim when he tried to speak, and so they stood in silence for five minutes. Saavik managed to stay almost preternaturally still and it made Jim feel childish, to know that he was more restless than a six-year-old.

“It says here that you adopted Saavik forty-five days after James did. Why?” she asked Spock. He and Jim shared a look.

“It’s a fake marriage,” Jim blurted out. “I was originally going to be the only one who adopted Saavik, but I needed Vulcan citizenship to do it, and so Spock offered to marry me so I could get it. We ended up practically raising her together anyway, and so I asked if he wanted to adopt Saavik too, and he did. We’re doing the parenting thing together, but we aren’t romantically involved.”

“Well shit,” she said. “Excuse the language, but this is the sort of thing the other guy’s lawyer would kill for. It ain’t against the law—at least not Vulcan law—but it is a form of fraud, and cases like this live and die on character. I don’t want this getting out. From now on, you two are married for real. I don’t want either of you even looking at other men. Or women, just coverin’ my bases. I want you two to go on dates and look couple-y and lovesick and all that jazz. The other lawyer can’t get a whiff of this or you’re dead meat.”

* * *

 

They couldn’t say why the captain and first officer of the Enterprise would be staying at a starbase for a month while the ship went on without them, because something like that only happened for court cases and this court case was not officially happening, so to circumvent the problem, Starfleet was having the entire Enterprise crew stay docked while it went on. The official story was that it was so the cloaking device could be reverse engineered and reproduced, and no it couldn’t be removed from the ship for them to do that. Because of complicated technological reasons.

“Where were you yesterday?” Tommy asked. He and Saavik were pretending to be superheroes in the starbase’s main port lobby, with Bumberfuffle as their trusty sidekick.

“With a lawyer,” she replied, holding her arms behind her back and pretending to zoom around and fly like Tommy had shown her.

“What’s a lawyer?”

“Someone who fights with people for money.”

“Like a wrestler?”

“No. They fight with words.”

“Oh,” he said. “Why did you have to see a lawyer? That sounds bad.”

“It’s a secret,” she said.

“Can you tell me? I promise I won’t tell nobody.”

Saavik thought about it. “You have to pinky promise.”

“Okay,” Tommy nodded seriously. The two joined pinkies. “What is it? What’s the secret?”

“My mother is trying to take me away from my dads.”

“You have a mother?” His eyes bulged. “I thought you could only have two parents. And you already have two dads.”

She nodded. “She’s a mean lady and I don’t like her.”

“I hope she goes away for you.”

“She maybe will. Dad’s going to try to send her to jail.”

“What? What for?”

“For being mean to me,” she said. “She’s that Romulan lady from before. From the mission.”

“The one who tried to kill you?” he gasped. She nodded. She still had the bruises around her neck. They had been photographed as evidence.

“And she did a ton of other stuff too.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Like keeped me in a cage. And poked me with needles. And made me do mind stuff. Sometimes she used a zappy machine.”

Tommy looked concerned. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I am now. Jim saved me.”

“Good. I would be sad if you hadn’t gotten saved. Then you wouldn’t be my friend. I like being your friend.”

“I like being your friend too,” she said.

* * *

 

Saavik was practically buzzing with excitement, holding a bouquet of balloons in one hand and Jim’s sleeve in the other as the Vulcan ship slowly came into dock.

The other survivors and their families stepped off, and she craned her neck to see through the crowd. She was looking for Sgon specifically. Miss Uhura had been having her practice her Vulcan spelling by writing letters, and so far almost all of them had been to him, with one exception for T’Mai. The teenager had acted as a big brother figure for her and looked out for her safety even before the starvation started.

“Sgon!” she yelled, running to him and throwing her arms around him, nearly knocking the guy down. He laughed and returned the hug.

“I missed you too, kid,” he said. “You’ve certainly gotten more… expressive, since I last saw you.”

It was true, Jim realized. Saavik had changed a lot in the past two and a half months. She still had a lot of issues, of course, but she was no longer the painfully shy and frightened little girl who rarely spoke or met people’s eyes. She still flinched at certain sounds or movements and was wary of the blueshirts, but she was doing so much better than she had been.

Sgon had changed too. He looked a lot more confident and a lot less paranoid. Almost like a regular teenager. He had adapted well to Vulcan behavior, and while he was still a long way from what would be considered proper, he had already mastered the nonexpressiveness and ramrod posture even before going to the colony.

They went out to one of the many restaurants ringing the terminal with Sgon, his parents, and his five siblings. The Vulcans were all varying degrees of quiet and reserved, which was downright unnerving coming from a group of kids who weren’t even in trouble or anything. Carrying on the conversation fell to Jim and Sgon and Saavik, oddly enough.

They ended the meal with Saavik asking her pen pal if he had gotten her latest letter and when he was going to write back, and he promised to send her a real letter on physical paper that very night, to be delivered to her hotel room. She shrieked with laughing joy.


	20. Report

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who's commented on this fic so far! You guys are really encouraging, and I always try to reply back, even if it comes across as awkward but that's because I'm an awkward person. :)

“Moooom!”

“Not now, Tommy, Mommy’s on the comm.”

“But I’m bored!”

“Why don’t you go play with your little Romulan friend?”

“I can’t, she and her dads are with the lawyer.”

“Lawyer?” Karen asked. “Sarah, I’m going to have to call you back. Why is the captain meeting with a lawyer? Is he being court martialed?”

“I can’t tell you, it’s a secret.”

“Oh my god,” she gasped. _“And_ the first officer? Oh, it must be something big. But why would they take their little alien with them? Oh! I bet it has to do with her! I knew that whole thing was fishy. We go into the Neutral Zone and come back with a bunch of Romulans and no one gets to know why? That was so illegal. I knew they were operating without orders. Oh my god, they kidnapped a child. Just wait ‘til Becky hears about this!”

“No, you can’t tell anybody! I pinky promised Saavik!” 

Karen scoffed and rolled her eyes.

* * *

 

Saavik opened her door in the morning to go to her dad’s room only to find a mob of reporters outside. Recording devices and flashing lights were pushed into her face, people asking questions loud and fast.

She gave an ear shattering scream and tried to _push_ the reporters away with her mind, a suggestion too light to take hold. Both her dads’ doors burst open at the same moment. It was recorded on at least a dozen different holovids streaming live.

“Captain! Why do you and your husband have separate rooms? Marital troubles?”

“Is it true you’re being court martialed?”

“Did you kidnap that child?”

“Are you getting a divorce? What’s happening with custody?”

“Rumor has it you’re getting a dishonorable discharge. Care to comment?”

“Captain, why are you in court? What did you do?”

“First Officer Spock, is it true your father disowned you?”

“Did he use his powers as ambassador to organize a cover-up?”

“When you kidnapped the Romulans, why did you decide to keep one?”

“What did you do with the rest? Were they sold into slavery?”

“Can I have a statement—“ 

Jim pushed through the crowd to grab both Saavik and Spock by the wrists and drag them into his hotel room. His comm was already beeping.

* * *

 

The headlines weren’t good. Most included something about the secret court case, and almost every last article had a clip from that morning. Jim had just rolled out of bed and nearly had a heart attack, and the combination made him look a bit wild-eyed and caveman-esque. He looked commanding and violent pulling Spock and Saavik away from the reporters, which was, again, not a good combination for a family man.

The others weren’t much better. Spock looked disheveled and mildly shocked, and he had to be humiliated by that. He was the most famous Vulcan in Starfleet, his highly publicized emotional display would definitely be talked about back home.

And Saavik.

Jim had thought that maybe people were decent and drew the line at attacking a child in print. But no, what she got was so much worse than some unflattering holos. The psychic push she had given them had been caught on camera. They were saying she was dangerous. Volatile. Out of control.

An out of control Vulcan was everybody’s worst fear and she was spared no mercy. She was painted as a mind controller without any morals, an unhinged science experiment, a dangerous monster that needed to be locked back up where she came from. People were calling for her to be brought up on telepathic assault charges. Some even stretched it to the point of calling her a serial mind rapist.

Jim wanted to punch somebody so, so badly. 

That just wasn’t true. It wasn’t. She hadn’t gone through any part of their minds, she had just shoved them away. She was a scared kid surrounded by unfamiliar people, and she reacted. It was nothing to crucify her over.

* * *

 

Now that the cat was out of the bag, everything was just about damage control. The Federation Council released a carefully-worded statement that confirmed the nature of the case. That it was against a Romulan war criminal and that a bunch of Vulcan hybrid children had been called as eyewitnesses. The statement was brief.

Their lawyer, Jane Wodenstein, somehow cajoled the Council into giving them permission to give interviews. Convinced them it would be good PR somehow. 

To expedite the process, they would be giving them all separately.

* * *

 

“So,” the reporter flipped her recording device on. “What can you tell me about the trial?”

“The case is of the United Federation of Planets versus the Romulan Commander Charvanek Selevo. The commander is being brought up on charges of poaching an endangered species, willful endangerment of lives, abuse of children, torture, 300 counts of kidnapping, and 517 counts of manslaughter.”

The reporter frowned. “All of that was in the Federation report. What about your personal perspective?”

“I have no personal perspective.”

“You have no personal perspective? This is—Your daughter is one of the victims,” she said, concerned and confused. 

“I deal only with the facts, Ms. Vorwerk. Everything else is irrelevant.”

* * *

 

“So you and the commander. Sleeping in different rooms? What’s that about?” the man asked. This reporter was from a gossip rag and wasn’t even trying to compete for the same story as the more hard-hitting news outlets. They had decided Jim would be best equipped to deal with him.

Wodenstein had also informed them that they were still fake in love in their fake marriage and that that getting out was the worst-case scenario and do they _want_ to lose their case?

“Spock and I had a little fight and decided we both needed some space to cool down. It was nothing big. We’ve already switched back. It’s just this whole thing with the court case has been a bit stressful, y’know?”

“I’m so sorry.” The reporter leaned forward, resting a hand on Jim’s knee. He shot him a questioning glance, but didn’t move away, instead draping his hand over the reporter’s in turn. 

“Don’t worry about it.”

* * *

 

Saavik sat perfectly still and stared at the reporter with piercing intensity. The older woman swallowed.

“So, um, what can you tell me about your dads? How did you first meet them?” she asked. 

Saavik said nothing. She continued to stare, and the reporter cleared her throat and looked away once it became awkward.

* * *

 

Jim shoved his reporter against the wall and the man brought their lips together hungrily, hands roving over him freely.

“If any of this ends up in the papers…” Jim warned. 

“It won’t,” the reporter said, and they stopped talking as Jim kissed him roughly, biting at his lip and slipping his tongue into his mouth.

* * *

 

“—legal technicalities of a case involving individuals from separate hostile states,” Spock finished after ten solid minutes of talking.

The reporter’s head lolled forward, and then snapped back up with sudden intensity. She blinked a few times and covered a yawn.

“Do you have any further questions?” he asked.

“Yeah. Why can’t you just give me one straight answer?”

“Were my answers insufficiently detailed?”

“No! That is _not_ what I meant. Can’t you just tell me what you really think, instead of hiding behind eight layers of academic jargon and stating the obvious?”

“One cannot conceal a physical body behind sound waves, Ms. Vorwerk. That is physically impossible.” 

She looked up to the sky and closed her eyes, sighing heavily.

* * *

 

“Were you kidnapped?” Saavik’s reporter tried again.

No response.

She was determined to push through. She was a journalist for the Galactic Report, dammit, she had worked tougher stories than this. She could interview a goddamn six-year-old. “Do you feel like you are in danger around James Kirk?”

She frowned. “My daddy loves me.”

_Finally._

“You consider him to be your father, then? What about Mr. Spock?”

“They’re both my dads.”

“And how did they come to be your dads?”

“We adopted each other,” she said. The reporter smiled. She was going to quote the hell out of that.

* * *

 Jim slipped his hands under the reporter’s—Sean’s—shirt and tugged it up, tossing it onto the floor. Sean was undoing Jim’s pants just as fast while simultaneously sucking on his neck in a way that was sure to leave a mark.

Jim cupped the other man’s ass, pressing him closer, rubbing their groins together. Sean moaned into the nape of Jim’s neck, and suddenly he was being pushed backward to a door that lead to a bedroom.

* * *

 

“I see no purpose in asking about my feelings on the matter,” Spock stated.

“I’m not asking about your feelings,” she said. “I’m just asking for your opinion.”

“What aspect, precisely, would you like my opinion on?”

“The case,” she said, frustrated. “What do you think of the case?” 

“You must be more specific.”

* * *

 

Once Saavik started talking, she didn’t stop.

“—and then Dad bought me a dog and I named him Bumperfluffer—er, Bummerfluffley— _Bumberfuffle_ , and I took him home back up to the Enterprise and showed him where his bed was and gave him food and stuff and Dad said I did a good job and was respos’ble. That’s a good thing, he said so. And then I—“ 

“Saavik,” the reporter interjected. “How about we move on to the next question, hm?”

* * *

 

Jim pulled out and collapsed on the bed next to Sean, both of them naked and panting, slick with sweat and come.

“So your marriage to Spock—“ 

“Don’t you dare ask about that.”

* * *

 

“That’s it,” Ms. Vorwerk snapped her recording device off, gathering up her things brusquely. “We’re done. No more questions. Good day, Commander Spock.”

She marched out of the room before Spock could say anything else. 

And so ended their interviews.

* * *

 

The first day of the custody trial began unceremoniously. Jim had almost forgotten about it, he had gotten so wrapped up in the hullaballoo of the other case.

Wodenstein had called their first day in court an appearance, and it really was an appearance. The only people who got to do any talking were the two lawyers, the law guardian, and the judge. They were only going to be determining a temporary custody arrangement for the duration of the trial today.

But Jim seethed at that arrangement.

Selevo’s lawyer alleged that her child had been unfairly kidnapped from her. That the abuse allegations were completely unsubstantiated. That she had never laid a hand on Saavik herself. That anything it had seemed like she had done had been necessary to preserve her life. That under normal circumstances, free of the Empire, she would be a perfect mother. That she had been fighting tooth and nail to get back to Hellguard and rescue the children the entire time. That she had always secretly protected Saavik from the worst of it.

They decided it was unfair to determine permanent custody without Selevo first having a chance to prove her parenting skills in a normal environment. She was to have temporary custody for one week, after which they would have a second court appearance. A social worker would be checking in daily to make sure no abuse occurred.

Jim nearly got up from his chair right then and there to throttle the damn judge, but Spock laid a hand on his arm, restraining him.

Selevo did not allow Saavik time or space to say her goodbyes before leading her out of the courtroom. She looked back at her parents with fear in her eyes, and in that moment Jim saw all the progress they had made with her unravel.


	21. Dealbreakers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to get to replying to all your comments, I just haven't yet because a lot of them were very long, and impassioned, and frankly I just don't know what to say.
> 
> Also I forgot to mention I guess that thing where Saavik adds -an to the end of someone's name is a Vulcan honorific catch-all-- it can mean Ms/Mrs/Mr/Miss. 
> 
> Also have you ever considered how it would be functionally impossible to 'cheat' on a telepath?

Saavik followed her meekly back to her hotel room. Selevo didn’t say a word the entire way, and simply pulled out the couch and began making up a bed on it once they got inside.

“This is where you will sleep,” she said. “If you need anything, do not hesitate to ask.  What would you like to eat?”

Silence.

“Saavik, you must eat dinner. Now either you can tell me what you would like to eat and I will make it for you, or I will make you the same thing I am having and you will have to eat that.”

A pause.

“Grilled cheese,” she said quietly. Jim had replicated her one a few times and they always split the sandwich and dunked it in tomato soup. It was fun.

Selevo raised an eyebrow. “A peculiar choice.” Nevertheless, she programmed the replicator to grill a small block of Romulan goat cheese.

Saavik stared at the plate in disgust. “This is not grilled cheese.”

Selevo paused. “Yes it is.”

“No it’s not. Not how Jim makes it.”

She scoffed. “Child, I assure you the replicators here work in the same manner as the replicators aboard the Enterprise. This is exactly how Jim made it.”

Saavik pushed the plate away and folded her arms.

“You insolent little brat,” she said incredulously. “Is this how the humans taught you to repay kindness? You  _asked_  for this food, and I had it made special just for you. I’m not going to give you anything else to eat until you finish that.”

She may have to pretend to want the kid for the next week, but she didn’t have to put up with petulance.

* * *

 

Jim and Spock walked back to their now-shared hotel room in silence. Spock pulled the spare bedding out of a drawer and set it on the couch. “You may sleep here tonight.”

“Why the sudden change in attitude?” Jim asked. He had expected to either continue their previous arrangement of sharing the bed or at least to rehash the whole thing, with both insisting on taking the couch themselves and trying to out-stubborn each other. It was… unusual for Spock to concede before the argument could even begin. It was unusual for him to concede at all.

“I do not believe it is sudden.”

So he admitted that something had changed. “Ah, okay. Why the change in attitude, then?”

Spock looked at him like he couldn’t believe he was being asked this, and Jim felt a flash of anger across the bond, which was surprising to say the least, because Spock was usually really careful about repressing that sort of thing. And it took a hell of a lot to provoke him. “My ‘change in attitude’ is merely a natural reaction to the events of the day.”

Oh. “We’ll get her back, Spock, don’t worry. We’re going to fight this. There’s no way Selevo can just swoop in and take her, not when we have photographic evidence of an attempted murder. She isn’t going to get away with—“

“While disturbing, that was not the matter to which I was referring.”

Jim frowned. “Then what are you talking about?”

“Your engagement in sexual intercourse with a gossip columnist.”

He reeled back. “How do you even know about that?”

“Why do you ask? Did you intend to hide the matter?”

“No, I just—“

“If so, you should have considered that we share a mental link and are in constant communication with each other’s thoughts and sensations. You have sat in on enough telepathy lessons with Saavik to understand the basics of shielding. In the future, I recommend employing them. The discomfort would be well worthwhile on a temporary basis.”

Jim paled. “You  _felt_  me having sex?”

“That is a somewhat inaccurate descriptor. I did not ‘feel’ so much as—“

“You felt me having sex! Oh my god!” He paced the length of the room, carding fingers through his hair. “Oh my god, Spock, I swear it won’t happen again. I had no idea you would—shit. God, this is embarrassing. I mean—“

“I have no problem with you pursuing sexual relationships. It is a subject we never discussed, perhaps foolishly. It is of no consequence so long as you are discreet and shield yourself. We are likely to be bonded for several years yet until you and Saavik form a familial bond. I cannot expect you to forego all relationships during that time. However,” he said. “I do not believe it was unreasonable to expect a certain level of restraint for the brief duration of the trial when we are under intense scrutiny and so much is at stake.”

And if Jim was honest with himself, he was right. He should’ve had more restraint. He normally did. It wasn’t like he was some sex-crazed maniac incapable of controlling himself. It was this thing with the bond, though. He wanted Spock. Bad. He couldn’t have Spock. Sean was a man with dark hair and dark eyes. He had been close enough.

That was no excuse though. It was still dawning on him just how badly he had fucked up. God, the man had been a reporter. No, worse than that, a gossip columnist. It would be pure luck if he kept his word and kept it quiet. If the judge thought they were having marital troubles, their custody case went down the drain right then and there. Even if they didn’t find out about the green card marriage side of things, that looked bad for them.

He could lose Saavik. He could lose Saavik for both of them. God, what had he been thinking?

He hadn’t been thinking. He had been feeling and desperate and hungry for touch and his mind had been completely blank when Sean put his hand on his knee. There had been no consequences in that moment, only skin and heat and touch _,_   _finally_  touch.

“You’re right. I screwed up. I’m so sorry, Spock, you have no idea how sorry I am. If I could take it back, I would. Even I don’t know why I did that,” he said. “I think the bond’s been messing with me. You know, like we talked about that night on New Vulcan?” This was officially becoming one of his top ten most awkward conversations ever. They had been careful not to so much as brush each other since that night, and even more careful not to acknowledge why. The bond called out to them from disuse with more intensity every day, the desire, the urge, the need growing stronger and stronger tick by tick. 

It seemed like there was an obvious solution here. He didn’t need anything explicit, he just needed touch, any touch, that exquisite, intoxicating sense of Spock on him or him on Spock. And wasn’t that embarrassing, an overwhelming need to cuddle?

“Ah.” And Spock didn’t blush, but it was a near thing. “Perhaps you should attempt meditation.”

“Would that work?” he asked.

“It could ameliorate the effects.”

“Okay. Worth a shot.” He sat cross-legged on the floor. “Teach me?”

His eyes were so blue and so trusting that for a second Spock forgot why he had banished him to the couch that night. Wouldn’t it be preferable to be closer?

He nodded and went to gather the meditation supplies, slowly lowering the light shield that Jim hadn’t noticed for the 1.57 minutes it had been up.

* * *

 

The block of cheese was still untouched on the table in the morning. The two Romulans rose and began their morning preparations in silence, taking pains to avoid each other as they bathed and dressed. Selevo replicated for herself a grain meal and took her place at the table.

“528, you will join me,” she commanded. Saavik meekly sat in her seat, hands gripping the chair.

“if you do not eat what has been provided, you will not eat at all.”

Saavik eyed the cheese pensively. It was half melted, but over the night it had cooled and rehardened, giving it the appearance of a candle covered in drips and pools of wax. It had burnt black lines running across it in regular intervals, and they cut deep into the block, creating round valleys. 

It stank.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. And she was hungry. It was just a new form of Terran food she had already had before and liked, right?

She picked up her fork and speared a chunk off, tentatively biting it.

It was absolutely disgusting.

She spit it out. “That’s gross!”

“If you do not like grilled cheese, then why did you request grilled cheese?” Selevo asked exasperatedly.

“Not like this,” she said.

Selevo closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know what you mean and I don’t have time to figure it out. I have a meeting with my lawyers in twenty minutes. I expect that meal finished off by the time that I return. I will be back at 1700 hours. Do not leave the suite.”

She cleaned out her bowl and left, leaving Saavik alone in the silence.

She checked the chronometer. 0824 hours. Scotty-an had been teaching her how to do math like this. She got out a padd and scribbled down her calculations for a few minutes, tongue sticking out of her mouth.

She would be alone for eight hours and thirty-six minutes.

It got boring fast.

She did all of her math that Scotty had given her and the science worksheet Spock had assigned. She read a children’s book in Standard and wrote a reply to Sgon in Vulcan. She put it in an envelope and set it on the table. She would walk over and give it to him right now, but that would mean leaving the suite.

She pushed a chair over to the wall and stood on it to reach the replicator. It only had a few dishes programmed into it, all of them unfamiliar and Romulan. The only name she recognized was the one labelled ‘grilled cheese,’ and uh, no thank you.

She chose a dish at random and replicated it. It turned out to be a Romulan casserole consisting mostly of vegetables and noodles, all covered in a tangy orange sauce that made Saavik’s nose wrinkle. She picked out the veggies and that made it kinda sorta okay.

She threw the cheese block into the incinerator and carefully scrubbed and put away both dishes. She flopped on the couch, now officially out of things to do. She could send Tommy a message. But she would have to use the computer to do that. Mother’s personal computer.

It wasn’t that she was too scared to do that, she just didn’t wanna.

She wished she had a padd or something.

She decided to make paper snowflakes, like Jim had shown her how to that one time. She had never actually seen snow, but she could imagine what it looked like based on the snowflakes. Only she couldn’t find any safety scissors—or any scissors for that matter—so she decided to use one of the knives from the kitchen instead. It was a lot harder to use, but it worked. Getting a knife to cut through paper was harder than it sounded, it required a lot of pressure and repeated motions, and it wasn’t good for any delicate cuts. The process was time-consuming and a bit frustrating, but hey, it was something to do.

She was on her third snowflake when Mother came home.

“What are you doing?!” she asked.

“Making snowflakes,” Saavik’s eyes went wide. She froze perfectly still in her seat, barely breathing, heart fast as a hummingbird’s wings in her side.

“With a knife?!” Selevo snatched it away. “You could have hurt yourself! Do you know what happens if you hurt yourself?”

“I—I go to sickbay?”

“No! Mother gets in trouble, and it would be all your fault.” She was gesturing with the knife now, almost unconsciously pointing it in Saavik’s face.

Normally this would be the point where Saavik would be appropriately punished, but all the punishments Selevo typically employed were out of the question in this scenario. She would have to use more socially acceptable Terran ones.

“Now, since no harm was actually done, your punishment will be a light one. You will go to bed without dinner. Do not expect to get off so easily a second time. Do you understand me?” Saavik nodded fervently. “Good. The social worker will be by in a few minutes. You are going to tell him you had a wonderful time here, you were watched the whole day, and you are perfectly content here. You are not to breathe a word of this knife incident. Do I make myself clear?”

Again, she nodded wordlessly.

* * *

 

Wodenstein called Jim and Spock into her office, sitting them in chairs opposite her desk. She stared at them for several tense minutes before speaking.

“Those interviews,” she said slowly, lighting a cigarette, “were abysmal. You better have some damn good excuses.”

“I fail to see how the answers I gave could be considered subpar,” Spock said. Wodenstein rolled her eyes.

“A computer could have given your answers. The whole point of doing interviews was to humanize you.”

“You can’t humanize someone who isn’t human,” Jim piped up. “You’re projecting Terran standards onto him. Of course his answers were a little robotic, he’s a Vulcan, that’s just how they are. You can’t really expect him to give some heart-rending speech about the emotional impact the case is having on him, can you?”

“And you,” she turned to him, her voice venomous. “Don’t even get me started on how bad you fucked up. Every gossip rag in the galaxy is talking about you. Half a dozen of them claim you’ve been sleeping around, even the one you did an interview for. That shot of you two leaving separate rooms in the morning hit us hard. Now everyone is convinced that you’re separated and only stickin’ it out for the sake of the kid. We need to change that. Unhappily married parents don’t win custody cases. Did you get a shared room yet?”

“Yes,” Jim said.

“Good. Next thing to do is date night. I want you two to be seen being all romantic and lovey-dovey in public, and I want reporters there to get it on camera. Take all your meals in the main mess, together. Tomorrow you’re going out to a fancy dinner at one of the nicer restaurants at the starbase, I don’t care which one. And after I want you two seen leaving for your shared room together. Oh, and holding hands. Just look married.”

“Holding hands has different connotations on Vulcan than it does on Earth,” Spock said.

“I know. Make sure the reporters snap a ton of holos of it.”

Jim shook his head, figuring this was all some weird fever dream because it couldn’t possibly be real. “Listen, as much as I’m loving this conversation, I actually have a question. Is there any way we can get Saavik back before the week is up? Because her mom is an abusive shitbag and it can’t be good for her to have to live with her.”

“Yeah, but do you have any proof that she’s an abusive shitbag?” Wodenstein drawled, taking a drag from her cigarette.

“Yes. The holos of her attempted strangulation.”

“What?!” she said, then dissolved into a coughing fit. “Why wasn’t that in the file?"

“It is being used as evidence in the Hellguard case, which makes it automatically classified,” Spock said.

“Is there any way you can get it un-classified?” Jim asked.

“Are you kidding me? I’ll get that declassified if I have to storm the Federation Council room myself just to yell at them. That’s relevant information and it should’ve been disclosed to me.”

“So we can get Saavik back?”

She pursed her lips. “That sorta thing takes time. We gotta cut through a lotta red tape here. I don’t think I can get it declassified in under a week. Bureaucrats, ya know. She’s gonna have to tough it out.”

* * *

 

“Tommy!” Saavik squealed as she opened the door the next day, then stopped herself, folding back into her silence and nonexpressiveness. She glanced around the hallway to make sure Mother wasn’t around—not that she ever was—and pulled Tommy inside.

“Your dads said you would be here,” he said, looking around. “Look, I brought you some candy. Your dad made me pick out all the chocolate ones though, ‘cuz he says you can’t have them.”

She stared at him, unblinking.

“Saavik?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

“You broke your pinky promise,” she said. “You were the only person I told about the lawyer, and now everybody knows. When you make a pinky promise, it has to be true, no matter what.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” he looked down at his shoes. “It wasn’t my fault though. I told my mom I couldn’t play with you ‘cuz you were busy with the lawyer, and then she went and told everybody! I told her to stop, but she wouldn’t. I’m sorry.”

She considered that. “You still shouldn’t have told your mom.”

“I’m sorry. Candy?” He held out a fistful. Saavik’s stomach growled against her will. She took a piece, slowly unwrapped it, and chewed it. Her eyes lit up. She took the rest of the candy and devoured it hungrily. Tommy laughed.

“So are we friends again?”

“Yeah, we’re friends.”


	22. Hanukkah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm an ex-Jehovah's Witness who's very salty about seeing so many Christmas fics as if Christian is the default even when Spock is canon Jewish. Jewish readers, if I got anything wrong, please tell me so I can correct it.
> 
> Rumarie is an ancient Vulcan holiday that's just a huge festival of orgies and basically all forms of hedonism.

“Mm. You have to try this Spock, it’s amazing. Here,” Jim held out a forkful of food, clearly intending to feed his first officer himself. 

“I believe I am perfectly capable of feeding myself, Ca—Jim,” he said. Wodenstein had given him quite the lecture on not ever addressing him as ‘captain’ ever again for the length of the trial or so help her god. 

“Yeah I know. It’s a human couple thing though. It’s considered romantic.” 

“Indeed?” Human customs were strange. 

“Yeah,” Jim held the fork further forward, and Spock took the prompt, lips closing around the dessert and eyes fluttering shut for just a second, and Jim was breathless. 

He cleared his throat. This was ridiculous. Stupid bond had him thinking like a teenager and conjuring up impossible situations that would never happen and he didn’t even want, really. It was just the bond. 

“So,” he said as Spock swallowed and he retracted the fork. “What do you, ah… What do you wanna do after this? You know. For fun?” 

“What activities do you have in mind?” 

Nothing PG, that’s for sure. “Uh… Do you wanna play chess?” 

“That is agreeable,” he said. 

“You wanna go right now?” he shrugged. “I’m done eating if you are.” 

Spock agreed, and the two got up from the table. Jim insisted on paying this time, which Spock seemed thoroughly exasperated by but Jim felt faint amusement in the bond there too, inexplicably. They headed back to their suite, and Jim got out the old chess set he had beamed down with him, setting up the antique pieces. 

By silent agreement, they decided not to discuss any serious personal matters and so stuck to safe topics. They ended up talking for two hours about Federation politics, advanced warp theory, and the ethics of Andorian frost-core experimentation. It was the most intellectually stimulating conversation either of them had had in years. 

Spock remembered the few times he and Jim had melded, that shining brilliant sunshine that was Jim’s mind. How dynamic it was, how sharp and fast and smart. It was illogical to classify a mind as beautiful, but if one could ever be called that, it was Jim’s. 

“Checkmate,” Jim smirked, for the fifth time that night, and Spock stared at him with open incredulity. They both reached for Spock’s king at the same time, their hands accidentally clasping one another’s. 

Electric energy coursed through their contact, both mental and physical. It was a shockwave of pure pleasure visceral enough to shake through them, leaving tremors in its wake. It was like touching an electric current, and Spock felt his bondmate’s desire reflecting back on him and suddenly his lips were on Jim’s and he didn’t know how that happened. 

Jim’s lips parted with a surprised moan and Spock thrust his tongue into his mouth greedily. Jim ran his hands up into Spock’s hair, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss. They pushed away from the chess table, standing and pressing their bodies against each other. Spock’s hands were roving over every inch of him, as if trying to soak up the sensations, to memorize him. Jim trailed kisses along his jaw, moving up to nip at his earlobe, and Spock gasped. 

His hands slipped under his shirt, seeking out the warmth of his skin, and their bond hummed at the additional contact, crackling to life. He could feel everything that Jim felt, his own pleasure doubled by that of his bondmate’s. He sought Jim’s lips again with his own, kissing him roughly, hungrily. 

Jim was licking into his mouth when he pulled back suddenly, breaking all contact. “We shouldn’t do this,” Jim said. “This is a bad idea.” 

“It is a perfectly acceptable idea,” Spock said, moving in to kiss him again. Jim put his hands on his shoulders. 

“Spock,” he said. “What about Saavik? If we do this… if it ends wrong…” 

They couldn’t afford to give a relationship a shot when it working out wasn’t a sure thing. And they sure as hell couldn’t afford to do anything casual. They were married. They were raising a kid together. They had to be able to continue to do that amiably, no matter what. Risking everything on a maybe just wouldn’t be fair to Saavik. She deserved to have both her parents get along. They couldn’t afford to date because they couldn’t afford to break up. It wouldn’t be fair to their daughter. 

They needed to be able to co-parent without any awkwardness or coldness between them. They hadn’t come this far only to genuinely start having marital troubles. There was too much at stake here. 

There was a million logical reasons why this was a bad idea. Spock didn’t care one bit. 

Jim took several steps back, retreating to the couch, and Spock blocked their bond in an act of self-preservation. He would undo it later, after extensive meditation. 

* * *

 

Waiting for the rest of the week to pass was hell. Jim slept on the couch every night, and Spock acknowledged it with numb resignation. Wodenstein swore she was pushing the Council as fast as she could. A picture circulated the gossip columns of Jim and Spock seated intimately close at a table, Jim leaning in to whisper something and candlelight bathing their faces. A shot of them giving the oz’hesta and walking into their room made the front pages. The press was eating it up in speculation. 

It was widely assumed that the fading hickey on Jim’s neck had been placed there by Spock. Wodenstein told him not to hide it. 

They gave more interviews. Better ones this time, together. Wodenstein decided that was best so that they could balance each other, whatever that meant. 

They were a perfectly happy loving couple in public but things had never been colder in private. Wodenstein made an off-handed comment about the loss of a child often driving couples apart, and Jim practically blew up at her, saying they hadn’t lost Saavik yet and they weren’t going to. 

Then  _finally_  the week was over. 

* * *

 

Selevo and Saavik entered the courtroom and Jim tried desperately to catch her eye, but her gaze remained fixed on the ground in front of her, following on Selevo’s heels and not once looking up. 

The second court appearance was all about determining each parent’s goals here and how serious they were about the case, which Spock found ridiculous—the idea that humans might go to court over matters they aren’t even serious about, and it happened often enough that judges had to be sure before they were even willing to take a case to trial. 

He decided they were serious. 

He asked if they would consent to a full psychological evaluation of all parties involved. It wasn’t actually a request. The evaluation would be performed by a psychologist of their choosing, and would entail said psychologist talking to Saavik, the law guardian, all three parents, Dr. Singh, Saavik’s teachers—meaning Uhura and Scotty, and Sgon—for lack of better sources on Selevo.  

And of course they consented.

* * *

 

“Saavik,” Jim said, approaching her and Selevo after the appearance. She locked eyes with him, but remained motionless at her mother’s side. “Sweetheart. Do you wanna come back with us now?” 

She nodded and went over to stand by him, and Jim ushered her away with a hand on her back. 

“Your child is a brat,” Selevo said. 

“You are misinformed and projecting,” Spock said. Her eyes narrowed. 

“I dare you to say that more plainly.” 

“I cannot, as I have already stated the obvious in simple Standard. Anything further is superfluous to the intelligent, and any troubles in comprehension are due to inadequacy on your part, not mine.”  

She smiled mirthlessly. “I will see you crumble, Spock. You talk high now, because Vulcans think themselves lofty, but give it time and I will bring you to your knees.” 

* * *

 

“What’s with all the lights?” Saavik asked, looking up in wonder. 

“Those are Christmas decorations. Humans put them up to celebrate the holiday. Christmas is a religious occasion where people honor the birth of a deity and exchange presents with one another,” Spock said. 

“Oh,” she said. “Do you celebrate Christmas?” 

“No,” he replied. “I do however celebrate Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday which occurs at roughly the same time.” 

Jim turned to him, surprised. “I never pegged you as the religious type.” He had especially never expected to hear that he practiced an Earth religion. 

“It was the tradition of my mother, and I carry it on to honor her. Additionally,” he said, “I find it illogical to believe a universe as complex and intricate as ours could exist so perfectly without being the product of intelligent design.” 

Jim smiled, shocked to see this side of him. Then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, are there any important Vulcan holidays I should be aware of?” 

“Vulcan has few holidays,” Spock said. “There is Kal-Rekk, the festival of atonement. It is a day spent in silence and solitude, allowing for deep meditation on the wrongs one has committed over the past year and what could have been done to prevent them. It is not for another 7.87 Terran months. And there is Rumarie, which is… no longer celebrated in modern times.” 

“Huh. Well, I’m not particularly religious either way. I usually celebrate Christmas, but with me it’s more of a cultural thing, ya know?” he said. He made a decision. “We should celebrate Hanukkah this year. I mean, if you want.”  

Spock’s eyes lit in the tiny way that meant he was smiling. “That would be agreeable.” 

* * *

 

Saavik was told very seriously not to tell Tommy that Santa Claus wasn’t real, though she did brag about getting eight days of presents compared to his measly one. She taught him how to play the dreidel game and he taught her how to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in one of the most amicable cross-cultural exchanges ever. 

They forewent gelt for obvious reasons. 

Once the artificial night of the starbase fell, they took out the menorah and set it on the chess table. Saavik took out the Shamash and placed a candle in the far right holder. Spock lit the Shamash and used it to light the other candle. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah…” 

* * *

 He discovered the change four days after they got her back. It was during a mind meld where he was helping reinforce her shields for possibly the last time ever and the first time in several weeks, when he found something… new. It was the silver thread of a bond, with a mind-taste he recognized, as easily identifiable as a fingerprint. Jim. 

* * *

 

Jim’s eyes boggled. “Seriously?” 

“Yes. You two now share a familial link. You now have an inherent claim to custody according to Vulcan law,” he said. 

“Wait, so what does that mean? Does the case not matter anymore? Is it like—null and void, we automatically win?” 

“No. A claim to custody is not a right to custody. Selevo also has a familial bond to Saavik. It has been there as long as we both have known her.” 

“What?! How’s that even possible? Saavik hates her!” 

“Love and hate have nothing to do with it. She recognizes Selevo as an inherent part of her family, and so her mind regards her as such no matter what. It is uncertain if that bond may ever break, and somewhat unlikely. However, this means that if you wished, you could challenge custody in the Vulcan way and end the case in a day.” 

“A day? Screw it, let’s do that. What is the Vulcan way?” 

“It is an ancient practice called Ku’nit Ka’fa’ar, or Struggle for the Way. The two opposing parents engage in battle and to the victor goes the child.” 

Jim had learned the hard way that any time an alien culture mentioned fighting, you should always assume it was to the death. And no doubt this fight would take place ceremonially on New Vulcan, in that thin and heat-soaked atmosphere, against a high-ranking Romulan warrior who had three times his strength. Selevo may be tiny compared to him but he was not in the business of underestimating people. 

“Uh, let’s consider that a last resort, actually,” he said. 

“As you wish,” Spock said. “As you are now bonded to Saavik, you no longer need to remain bonded to me as well and we may divorce at the soonest possible opportunity.” 

“Oh.” Soonest possible opportunity. That was… clear. Jim swallowed. “Okay. Of course, I mean.” That was always the plan. “So when is the soonest possible opportunity?” 

“The next time we are on New Vulcan. The process requires a mind healer, and all the remaining mind healers are at the colony.” 

He nodded. “We’ll have to take leave. It’s probably for the best, though, that we can’t do it right away. What with the trial and everything. It’d be pretty hard to convince anyone we’re together if we just got a divorce,” he chuckled hollowly. 

Spock gave him a look that was piercing and unreadable. “Indeed.” 


	23. Subject 512

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentions of torture, starvation, self-harm, and rape. If you want to avoid all that, skip to after the second line break.
> 
> I've decided that while Vulcans do have strict gender rules and customs, it would still be illogical to recognize male and female as the only possible genders. So now we have our first nonbinary Vulcan with a new naming structure that I just made up. I had intended to make one of the kids' parents a diamoric couple too but I couldn't find a way to fit it in.

The next day the Hellguard trial began. The first to take the stand would be Synak, a sixteen-year-old boy who looked perpetually tired and like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“Mr. Synak, can you identify the defendant?” the defense attorney asked.

“Yes. That’s the commander. 528 and 512’s mother.”

“Let me rephrase. Can you identify her by name?”

“I was never told her name.”

“You don’t even know who the defendant is and yet you’re testifying against her?”

“You don’t have to know someone’s name to know who they are. Most of the time we didn’t even know each other’s names ‘cuz they always called us by number, but we still knew each other. Probably better than you know most of your friends.”

“I see. And how did you know the defendant?”

“She was the one in charge of the compound.”

“Elaborate on that statement, please.”

“On Hellguard. When we were kept in the cages. She was the one in charge of the whole project, everyone answered to her. The commander.”

“And how did you know this?”

He shrugged. “She was the one giving out orders. The highest authority to ever show up there as far as I know. Everyone was terrified of her.”

“The highest authority to ever show up,” the attorney repeated. “As far as you know. But you don’t know, do you? The information about ranking officers was not disclosed to you, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“So your statement was pure speculation. You don’t know that she was the highest authority on Hellguard. And you definitely don’t know that she was in charge of the project. Let the record state that it is well-established that the Hellguard experiments were done by the Tal Shiar, the Romulan intelligence organization, of which Ms. Charvanek is not affiliated.”

“Objection! Intelligence reports that the Tal Shiar frequently works in joint with the Romulan Fleet. That was misleading information,” the prosecutor said.

“Sustained,” the judge said.

“Ms. Charvanek is under trial here on charges of child abuse, in part. You have been called forth because you are a victim. So tell me. Tell the court. How exactly did she abuse you?”

“Are—are you kidding me?” Synak looked around the courtroom helplessly.

“May I remind you that you are under oath, Mr. Synak,” she said. “Please answer the question with full honesty.”

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. “We were kept in cages. In a prison underground. There was no sunlight. I never felt sunlight until—“ he exhaled. “There was hardly any food. I know she was in charge of that. She could have given us more rations. But, it was… they said it was because of budget cuts. I think they just wanted to kill off the weaker ones.

“They would put us in these collars and have us meld with prisoners and if we didn’t, we got electrocuted. They would make us… make them do things. Read their minds and stuff. Control them. Or try to, at least. I wasn’t very good at it. I got shocked a lot.

“Sometimes—“

“Mr. Synak,” the lawyer interrupted. “I was not questioning whether Hellguard as an institution was abusive. That has been well established. I was asking for specific instances of how Ms. Charvanek personally harmed you, if such a thing ever happened.”

He thought for a moment. “The food thing. She’s the reason we starved.”

“On what do you base this accusation?”

“I heard some guards talking one time. One said the commander ordered all subjects’ rations be cut in half. The other asked why. He said budget cuts. And then he… and then he laughed.”

“Hearsay. From a source who is conveniently unreachable,” she said. “ _A_  commander—possibly Ms. Charvanek, possibly not—made an executive decision to reduce rations due to lack of resources. An impossible situation. Was that the only instance of ‘abuse,’ Mr. Synak?”

“Yes,” he ground out.

“No further questions.” The attorney returned to her seat gracefully, blonde ponytail gleaming.

* * *

 

Jim weaved over to Synak the second the court was adjourned. He grabbed him by the arm to get his attention, and instantly regretted it when the kid flinched as if he had been slapped.

“Sorry, sorry, I just want to talk to you,” he said. Synak didn’t say anything, but inclined his head, and it occurred to Jim that living on Vulcan would have him learning an entirely different set of social skills. “You said earlier that the commander was Saavik  _and_  512’s mother. Who was 512?”

He shrugged. “Does it matter? They’re dead now. Never made it off of Hellguard.”

“Can you tell me about them anyway? If Saavik had a sibling, I’d like to know about them.”

“They were a good kid. Smart. A fighter. That’s what got them killed,” Synak said. “A moderator told them to make a prisoner cut himself. Wanted to see if we could give suggestions powerful enough to override a person’s instinct for self-preservation. 512 refused, and the moderator kept shocking them, and shocking them, until…” He swallowed.

“What was their name?” Jim asked.

“Go’vinnai. They were nine when they died. Seven years older than Saavik. That’s how the—that’s how they would do it. Every seven years, this thing would happen to the adult Vulcans. The Romulans… took advantage of it.”

“What thing? What would happen?”

But Synak just shook his head and walked away.

* * *

 

“If I see one more lawyer today, I’m gonna snap,” Jim collapsed into a seat next to McCoy with a groan. He ached straight down to his bones. It had been one hell of a week.

“As soon as this whole thing is over, we’re taking you out to Risa,” Sulu promised, clapping him on the back.

“Ugh. God, that sounds great, but apparently as soon as this thing’s over I have to go to New Vulcan to get a divorce,” he said. His bridge crew exclaimed their shock and questions. “Saavik and I have a family bond now. I only need to be bonded to one Vulcan to have citizenship and get to keep her—in fact, this actually helps with the custody thing, since it’s a direct tie between us. So Spock asked that we break our bond at the soonest possible opportunity.” And maybe his voice was just slightly bitter on those last three words.

“I’m so sorry, Kirk,” Uhura said.

“What’s there to be sorry about? This is how this was always gonna end. It’s not like we were really married,” he said. Sulu and Chekov exchanged a glance. Bones threw an arm over his shoulders.

“Kid, what you need is a night out. Tonight, you and me, we’re hitting the bars. My treat,” he said. It was exactly what Jim had done for him the day his divorce had been finalized back at the Academy.

“It wasn’t a real marriage, Bones. I’m not heartbroken or anything, I don’t need you to—“

“This ain’t about that. You’ve had a rough go of it lately. Let me help make it up to you,” McCoy lied.

“Aye, lad. You need to get your mind off things,” Scotty added.

“Hey, we should all come with. Make it a group thing,” Sulu suggested.

“Aye!”

“I can’t. I have a date with a very beautiful lady,” Chekov said, grinning.

“So do I,” said Uhura. “Sorry.”

Jim waved a hand. “It’s fine.”

“I am not buying all’a y’all’s drinks,” Bones said, looking at Scotty pointedly. “I said I’d pay for Jim’s, not half the bridge crews’.”

Scotty just laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

* * *

 

Spock picked his way through the bar, careful not to touch any of the humans, and made his way over to Jim. His bondmate was laughing loudly at something Scotty had said, nearly snorting Saurian brandy out of his nose.

“Jim, something has come up. I request that you come with me,” he said.

“Aye, drunk off his arse, this one is. He’ll be no help to you,” Scotty said, taking another swig.

“’M not that drunk,” Jim rolled his eyes. Brandy sloshed out of his glass.

“My father has arrived at the starbase. He wishes to speak with both of us.”

Both of their expressions sobered. “Well, ain’t that a bucket o’ shite, innit?” Scotty said.

“Does it have to be now?” Jim asked.

Spock nodded. “He was insistent.”

Jim sighed and set down his glass. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.” This was not going to go well, he could feel it in his gut. That, and a lot of Saurian brandy.

Sarek was waiting for them in their hotel room. He stood imperiously, hands clasped behind his back, looking every bit the important ambassador. “Spock. Captain,” he greeted them.

“Wha’ d’you want, Sarek?” Jim asked.

“I came to see how the case was progressing and how I could be of assistance. I found it prudent to show up in person as apparently I cannot rely on either of you to relay pertinent information to me.”

That was way too many syllables for Jim’s brain right now, but he got the idea that Sarek was mad. Or, not mad. Vulcan mad.  _Displeased._

“I am displeased that I had to find out my own granddaughter’s parentage through the newspapers,” he said. Jim smothered a dopey grin. Displeased _._  He had been right.

“I did not think—“

“Do not call it irrelevant. I have already told you that all matters relating to my family are always relevant. From now on, I wish to be informed of any new developments regarding Saavik, no matter how minor you deem it to be,” he said. “Given this, is there anything else I should be appraised of?”

“Custody trial,” Jim said. “It didn’t make the papers.”

Sarek turned to his son for explanation, which he provided. “The commander threatened to sue for custody of Saavik unless we concealed her involvement in the Hellguard experiments. We refused, and she followed through on her ultimatum. I would not concern yourself with it. It is extremely unlikely that she would win.”

“I will decide for myself what I wish to concern myself with, Spock,” he said. “Who is acting as your legal counsel in this case?”

“Jane Wodenstein.”

“Why is your attorney a human when Vulcan law is at the apex of the field?”

“She trained on Vulcan,” Spock said.

“Custody is different. ‘S emotional. Needs an emotional lawyer,” Jim said.

“I see. And what is her legal strategy?”

“The case has not yet formally gone to trial. However, she is currently having us pretend our relationship is romantic in nature, as a marriage created in order to illegitimately gain citizenship is illegal and considered fraudulent by humans. She believes we must maintain the pretense of a romantic relationship in order to seem in good character.”

“You have done a poor job of that,” he said. “The tabloids have engaged in much speculation as to the true nature of your relationship, and they are not fully convinced of its romanticism.”

Jim couldn’t help it; he laughed. The image of Ambassador Sarek reading up on gossip rags to find out what his son was up to was just too much. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, trying and failing to school his features into seriousness.

Sarek looked between the two of them and made a decision. He had been patient so far, but he was not going to risk losing his only grandchild due to the foolishness of youth. He would have to accelerate his plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I wouldn't have killed Go'vinnai off but it had already been established that Saavik was alone on Hellguard with only Sgon watching out for her, but she's so young and from so late in the experiment that it didn't make sense for her parent to have produced only one child by that point. Sorry.


	24. Telan t'Kanlar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Telan t'Kanlar = the bonding of children  
> Pihlora = meditation instructor
> 
> The dialogue in that one scene is lifted from the TOS episode Amok TIme and somewhat edited.
> 
> Warnings for torture right in the first section.

The prosecutor took to the floor, adjusting her suit jacket and casting a smirk at the defense attorney. “Ms. T’Diisth,” she said. “What was the nature of your interactions with the defendant?”

“She ordered my torture,” T’Diisth said levelly, eyes fixed straight ahead.

“That must have been very traumatic for you. I’m so sorry, but could you elaborate on that a bit?”

“She came to supervise the moderators sometimes. She would check in on them and make sure the experiment was running as ordered. She wasn’t there often, but when she was, things were… different. Almost like everything was sharper? I don’t know. Everyone was nervous. The experiments would be longer, harder. The moderators would be a lot harsher with us. They wanted to show off. Impress their boss and stuff.

“Sometimes she would direct an experiment herself if she thought they weren’t pushing us hard enough. Those days weren’t good. She would make us do impossible things, and if we couldn’t, her punishments were—more severe than what the moderators usually did.”

“Can you cite specific instances?”

T’Diisth nodded. “Yes. I remember everything. One time she asked me to erase the last moon’s worth of memories from this prisoner she brought in. She was a spy, apparently, but she’d gotten caught. I had to—go into her mind and look through all those memories to pull them out. It was… What she had gone through was worse than anything I was ever subjected to. I felt it. You feel all of it, in a mind meld. That’s what they’re called, my pihlora told me.

“I took the memories out of her head and put them into my own. They had to go somewhere. I tried to—I tried to take as much as I could. But it was too much. Way too much. I passed out halfway through. I woke up hours later with huge burn scars on my neck and three bone fractures. They weren’t treated, and the bones in my arm ended up healing wrong. Apparently the commander said I needed to suffer. It’d give me incentive not to be such a failure next time, she said.”

“The commander specifically was the one who ordered that medical treatment be withheld from you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you aware of any reason why she would have been forced to make that call?”

“No.”

“So she did it of her own volition, then. This was pure malice and abuse of a child, in both the medical neglect and literal torture.”

“Objection! It was never stated that the defendant was the one who tortured or even ordered the torture of T’Diisth. Let the record show that even the witness has no idea who did that.”

T’Diisth’s testimony dragged on for four more hours. It was harrowing to listen to, Jim couldn’t imagine having to recount all that trauma in front of a room full of strangers and family. He was blissfully glad that Kodos was dead, not for the first time in his life. Being in her position was something straight out of his nightmares, and it ended with all his friends horrified and disgusted by him, repulsed. Pitying at best, never looking at him the same way again at worst. He wasn’t an idiot. That was the sort of information that changed the way you thought about someone. Changed the way you perceived them permanently.

He was captain of the Enterprise, youngest in the ‘Fleet. He couldn’t afford to be weak in the eyes of his crew. He couldn’t afford to be some fragile, damaged thing, to be pitied and handled with care. He didn’t want Tarsus IV to define him. Only a handful of people even knew he had been there, and he was determined to keep it that way. It was just a thing that had happened, a really long time ago. It had no bearing on who he was today.

Saavik being willing to testify made her a hell of a lot braver than he was, and you know what, he was okay with that. He was perfectly fine with admitting that he wasn’t brave when it came to Kodos. That Saavik was willing to come here and stand in front of everyone and say what she had to say, though—that was something. His little girl was tough as nails.

He snapped back to reality when he heard T’Diisth say “me and my bondmate, T’Vchon.”

 _Bondmate?_  Isn’t she a little bit young to be married? She’s only fourteen!

_T’Diisth is speaking of a preliminary betrothal bond that is often formed between Vulcan children. She is not married in the human sense._ _She is not remarkably young to have this type of bond._ _Telan t’Kanlar_ _typically occurs at age seven._ _I understand that priority has been given to bonding the survivors with each other, and_ _eight_ _of them are bonded in this manner._ _In addition to T’Vchon and T’Diisth, there is T’Mai and Synak, Stolek and T’Sahn, and T’Frav and Stridvak._

Jim jumped at Spock’s voice in his head. Of course, Spock’s thoughts were always in his head these days, but still, they were never usually this loud and clear. He supposed that was the difference between passive noise and actively projecting across their bond.

Panic struck him when he remembered what he had been thinking about just seconds earlier.

_Worry not, Captain._ _I know how you value your privacy. To disclose matters revealed through telepathic accident would be unethical in the extreme, and I would never do so._

He had to change the subject fast. He was  _not_  going to talk about this.

 _Age seven huh? Don’t tell me you’re expecting to marry Saavik off on her next birthday._  He laughed inside their minds.

Nice. Subtle.

_I was under the assumption that you wished to honor her cultural traditions?_

Oh my god, he  _was._   _Isn’t that… Do those marriages even work out? Are they happy?_

_Happiness is irrelevant in a Vulcan mating. Bonds are formed_ _based on mental compatibility. They cannot be forced if two individuals do not suit each other to a high enough degree._

_Then how were we able to form one? We aren’t even together. It’s a green card marriage, doesn’t that scream ‘forced bond?’_

The only reason Spock was able to parse out what the captain meant was because he was in his mind and he could see it.  _On the contrary. The reasons for forming a bond have no bearing on its potential success, and our minds are extremely compatible._

Spock felt rather than saw the glimmer of his grin.  _Extremely compatible, huh? You telling me we’re soulmates,_ _Mr. Spock?_

Possibly, but he dared not even think it. His mind skirted around the forbidden word t’hy’la that he had been studiously avoiding for weeks. It was not realistic. It simply wasn’t.

And even if it was true, it would change nothing. He could never have Jim. There was too much at risk. Contemplating the impossible would only cause him further pain.

_I am merely stating facts, Jim._

He snorted. _Alright. So tell me about this_ _Telan t’Kanlar_ _thing. What exactly happens?_

_Before the bond can be formed, a child must first complete the kahs-wan. They will be sent into the desert without the aid of any food, water, or weapons. If they return alive after one week, they are deemed a mature Vulcan, ready for marriage._ _Following that, a priest will bond the children in the presence of their par—_

**_If_** _they return alive?!_ Jim shrieked mentally.  _Vulcans send fucking seven-year-olds out into the desert all on their own for a week? That’s insane! Those kids could die!_

_Deat_ _h by kahs-wan is very rare._

_But it does happen, then._

_Affirmative._

_Saavik is_ **_not_ ** _doing that._

_Telan t’Kanlar_ _is necessary, Jim._

_Why? Give me one good reason why and then I’ll consider it. Why shouldn’t Saavik wait and marry someone of her own choice? She’s just a kid, Spock._

_She needs to be prepared before…_

_Before what?_

He faltered. _Pon farr._

Jim froze. He had to play this very carefully. Whatever this pon farr was, Spock was willing to risk Saavik’s life over it, and he wouldn’t take that stance without a good logical reason.  _I won’t let you risk our daughter’s life on only half an explanation, Spock. You better do better than that._

He couldn’t believe he was about to reveal this. But Saavik needed to undergo Telan t’Kanlar, and she couldn’t do that without both her fathers’ consent. Well, technically she could, but Spock wouldn’t allow it. He took a deep breath.

_It has to do with_ _…_ _biology._

Oh my god, it’s a sex thing.

_What?_

_Biology._

_What kind of biology?_ he asked carefully. He was getting pretty good at projecting by now.

_Vulcan biology._

Smartass.  _You mean, the biology of Vulcans_ _._ _Biology as in… reproduction?_

A subtle nod from Spock. Both of them were still sitting straight forward, pretending to listen as the defense attorney took her turn questioning the witness.

 _Well, uh, there’s no need to be embarrassed about it, Spock. It happens to the birds and the bees,_ he thought cheekily.

_The birds and the bees are not Vulcans, Jim. If they were—any creature as proudly logical as us—were to have their logic ripped from them as this time does to us…_ _There are precedents in nature. The giant eel birds of Regulus V. Once each eleven years they must return to the caverns where they hatched. On your Earth, the salmon. They must return to that one stream where they were born to spawn—or die in trying._

_But you’_ _re not_ _fish, Spock, you’re—_

_No. Nor am we human. We are_ _Vulcan_ _s_ _._ _The ancient drives are too strong. Eventually, they catch up with us, and we are driven by forces we cannot control to return home and take a mate… or die_ _._

Jim’s mind whirled at the new information. There was one thought that stood out in particular, and that was that he was absolutely not going to think about Spock that way. Nope, not happening, especially not when they were in the middle of telepathic communication and his grasp on shielding was still iffy. Not thinking about it. Not thinking about lying out Spock’s hot, lean body and—

Nope.

This was pretty much the worst case scenario as far as he was concerned. And also the best, because  _fuck,_  just the idea of that was hot.

Worst case scenario.

Focus.

_So you’re telling me if Saavik doesn’t have a bond formed before then, she could die?_

_Yes._ _Telan t’Kanlar_ _is_ _done_ _to give the bond time to settle. Pon farr requires mental release as well as physical. Only a bondmate will do._

_Then how come you didn’t already have one?_

Spock hesitated.  _I did have a betrothal bond_ _at one point. It was broken._

_Can I ask what happened?_

_The destruction of Vulcan._

_Oh! Oh my god Spock, I had no idea, I’m so sorry—_

_It is of no concern. What is, is._

_Still, you don’t need me dredging up—_

_Jim. It is fine. I am fine._

_Okay._ He breathed.  _Okay. Well, when’s the earliest this could hit?_

_Her third decade, though that is extremely rare._

_So not until_ _at least_ _her twenties?_ he asked.  _Well great. That makes this pretty simple then. We let her decide when she’s nineteen_ _whether she wants to go through with an arranged marriage or take the risk to find her own bondmate. Sound fair enough?_

Spock pondered that for a moment. That was an alternative to tradition that had never even occurred to him. Of course, one did not go looking for alternatives to tradition. Tradition was simply followed.

But it did not need to be.

_It is agreeable._

* * *

 

“May I come in?” Sarek’s voice chimed through the door. Spock was alone in the hotel room at the moment.

“You may,” he said. The exchange was one of many the door was pre-programmed to recognize as commands, and it opened automatically, admitting his father. Sarek took a seat on the couch and Spock turned from his desk to face him.

“I wish to discuss your bond with James.”

“There is nothing to discuss.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “You suspect it may be a t’hy’la bond, do you not?”

Spock said nothing.

“Sa-fu,” Sarek said, gently now. “Why do you not pursue him?”

“I did, Sa-mekh,” he said. “It is hopeless. He does not wish to take the risk. Should we attempt a relationship of that nature and fail, it would have negative consequences for Saavik. We cannot do that to her.”

“But you will not fail. He is your t’hy’la.”

“You do not know that. I do not know that. If we cannot promise forever, then it is not a risk worth taking.”

“You are a fool, sa-fu. For your t’hy’la, all risks are worth taking.”

“But he is not my t’hy’la.”

Sarek looked at him levelly. “Are you sure?”

* * *

 

Sarek rapped sharply on the door to Jane Wodenstein’s office. And he was not impatient, because he was Vulcan, but it did seem like an interminably long wait before she opened the door.

“If you wanna make an appointment, you have to go through my assistant,” she said gruffly.

“I do not wish to make an appointment.” She pressed a button on the other side of the door, and he thrust out his hand to keep it from closing. “You are representing my son and his husband in a custody trial. I want to inquire as to your legal strategy for the case, as it seems to be lacking.”

“Can’t tell you that. Attorney-client privilege.”

Sarek’s expression did not change, but his demeanor darkened. “I hold a lot of sway, both with my son and within the Federation as an ambassador. If you cannot satisfactorily explain your strategy to ensure the continued custody of my granddaughter, I will have you taken off the case and replaced within the hour.”

Wodenstein looked him over, sizing him up. She lit a cigarette and walked over to her desk, leaving the door open. “Come in.”

She sat down at her desk heavily. “I assume your son already discussed most of this with you?”

Sarek took his seat in one of the chairs opposite her desk. “Affirmative.”

“That’s good enough consent to disclosure for me,” she shrugged. “Whaddaya wanna know?”

“All I have been told of your legal strategy is that you wish for Spock and the captain to pretend to be romantically involved so as not to damage their reputation in the eyes of humans. This is both a failure so far and insufficient even if successful.”

“They haven’t failed yet,” she said. “And that’s not my whole strategy. That’s just the busywork I gave to the happy couple so hopefully they don’t screw things up even further.”

“Then what is your plan?” 

“I’m tryin’ to get Selevo to settle,” she said. “This ain’t a real case and everybody knows it. The judge is going to take one look at this and know it shouldn’t go to trial. The only thing this case is gonna do is waste everybody’s time and kick up hundreds of credits in legal fees. I’ve been talking with Selevo’s lawyer, and he seems to know that too. If I can persuade the both of them to drop all this before it even goes to trial, it’ll be like nothing ever happened and we can all go back to our lives like normal.”

“And how are you attempting to do that?”

She shook her head. “I’ve thrown every trick in the book at them and nothin’s worked. Not that I resort to bribery, of course, least not on my own dime. But this Selevo chick is bent on revenge and she’s got credits to burn. Until we can find something that she wants more, I’m at a loss.” She took a drag from her cigarette and blew out smoke. Sarek’s nose crinkled in disgust.

“At this point, Selevo’s pry gonna push for a trial no matter what. She’ll lose. The abuse is pretty damning, ‘specially now that I got that evidence of the attempted murder declassified. I’m gonna paint her as a damn cartoon villain, and your son and his husband as the valiant heroes who rescued this little girl outta the sheer kindness of their hearts. I don’t have evidence of the ultimatum, but I’ll be damned if she tries to deny it on the stand, I’ve got witnesses. And I’m gonna get Saavik’s therapist to testify. She’s gonna make sure everybody knows that this poor little girl has PTSD because of her time spent under her mother’s care, and that her mother is a trigger for her, and how Kirk has gotten her to open up and all that good stuff. Plus with their family bond now it’ll be a shoo-in. This whole case is a farce anyhow. Not like it’ll be hard.”

Sarek had frankly stopped listening a while ago, a plan already forming in his head.


	25. Psych Eval, Part 1

“Now, before we start, I just wanna say that everything you say in here is entirely confidential. The only people who will see my report are the lawyers and the judge. You can speak freely in here without worrying about it getting back to your bosses,” the psychologist said.

“Aye, I ain’t worried about that. I got nothin’ but good things to say about them,” Scotty said confidently.

“Alright,” she smiled. “Let’s begin.”

* * *

 

Bones sat nervously in his chair, constantly shifting. He didn’t like this. He didn’t trust himself not to screw it up, and he couldn’t bear it if he was the reason Jim’s daughter got taken away.

“It says here in your files that there was a physical altercation between Saavik and a Lieutenant Sulu. Can you elaborate on that?”

“Oh, that. It isn’t what it sounds like, he wasn’t hitting her or anything. She broke his ankle.”

“She broke his ankle?” she repeated, scribbling that down on her padd.

“Well, yeah. But she was under emotional duress at the moment.”

“How so?”

“Jim had just gotten kidnapped.”

“I see. And how long was he missing for?”

Bones shrugged. “Forty-five minutes, tops.”

“And Saavik was informed immediately?”

“She didn’t need to be. She saw it happen.”

The psychologist picked her stylus back up, holding it ready. “She saw it happen? How? Did she go with him on an away mission?”

“No, no, nothing like that. He was teleported straight off the bridge.”

“And Saavik was on the bridge when this happened?”

“Yes.”

“Is she frequently allowed on the bridge?”

“Well, yeah.”

She wrote that down.

“It’s not against regulations.”

“In the time she’s been aboard the Enterprise, has she seen anything worse than just Jim getting kidnapped?”

“No, not that I know of.” He shifted. She made a mental note to ask a member of the bridge crew.

* * *

 

“And how is Saavik’s education going?”

“Very well. She’s a fast learner. Jim often helps her with her homework. He’s a very hands-on parent,” Nyota said.

“What about Spock?”

“Spock goes above and beyond. He’s actually teaching her two subjects—science and telepathy—while the rest of us only do one.”

“Would you say that he’s a good teacher?”

“Yes, excellent. He was a professor at the Academy.”

“Teaching adults. Adults learn very differently than children.”

“He has experience teaching children as well. When the survivors were first beamed aboard the Enterprise, Spock served as a pihlora for all of them. He was able to successfully teach them all the basic concepts of shielding and key aspects of Vulcan culture as well. Acting as a pihlora requires lots of one-on-one instruction. It’s usually done by a parent or a trained professional who never takes on more than five students at a time, yet Spock managed just fine.”

“Sounds like they’re both very busy men. Jim is managing an entire ship of 400 people, conducting missions constantly. Spock is working two command jobs, as both First Officer and Chief Science Officer. How do they have time to raise a daughter as well?”

“They make time. Saavik is the most important thing in either of their lives, trust me.”

“Is she alone a lot?”

“No.”

“With babysitters, then?”

“During their shifts, yes, and when she’s not on the bridge.”

The psychologist nodded and wrote that down.

“Jim and Spock spend as much time with her as they can.”

“Of course,” she said.

* * *

 

“How is Saavik progressing in her studies?”

“Excellent. She’s a bright young lass. Spirited too,” Scotty said.

“Spirited?”

“Aye. The lass knows how to stand up for herself.”

“Well that’s a good thing. How did you discover this?”

The Tommy incident. “Oh, well I just mean, with everything she went through on Hellguard. She wouldn’t have survived if she wasn’t a fighter.”

The psychologist nodded. “Have there been any other instances where she had to stand up for herself since then?”

“Nothin’ worth reportin’,” he said evasively.

“Mr. Scott.” She set her stylus down. “You can speak freely. If Mr. Kirk and Mr. Spock have done nothing wrong, then you should have nothing to hide.”

“I don’t,” he bristled.

“Good.” She looked at him expectantly. He sighed.

“Alright. Well, the Cap’n and Mr. Spock didn’t do anything wrong, just so you know. It was entirely outside of their control. Jim had taken Saavik to this wee park thing we have on the Enterprise, and she met a little boy there—human, you know. And, well, the boy grabbed her by the hand. He didn’t know any better. But Jim and Spock, they taught their girl right, they had told her if anyone touches you there, that’s inappropriate for a Vulcan. Don’t let them. Only the lass took it a little bit far. She broke the boy’s nose on sight.”

There was a few moments silence while the psychologist wrote all that down as fast as she could.

“And how was she punished for this?” 

“She wasn’t. Jim and Spock thought it would set a bad precedent. Don’t wanna tell her one thing and then punish her for doing what they said, ya know?”

“Alright. Well, she was told that that was wrong, right? And why?”

“I, uh… I’m not sure.”

She wrote that down.

* * *

 

“What is your professional opinion of Saavik’s mental state?”

“She is obviously a very disturbed child. She’s gone through a lot of trauma. I diagnosed her with PTSD a few weeks ago,” Dr. Singh said.

“Can you tell me what some of her triggers are? It might be helpful in figuring out which environment is most harmful or beneficial to her.”

“Um, she doesn’t do well around scientists, or anyone that reminds her of the Romulans for that matter. Certain types of mechanical whirring set her off—she doesn’t like the sound of the turbolift. I think it’s the electric hum that does it. And while they’re not triggers, she does reenact her trauma in little ways. She likes to play scientist and follow Spock around while he works, imitating him. Her parents tell me that she’s usually kicked her blankets off by the time they wake her up in the morning, and there have been a few times they found her shivering, sleeping on the floor because she said the bed was too soft to sleep on. Also, she doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite, even for a six-year-old. Kirk expressed a great deal of concern over that.”

The psychologist kept talking while she wrote, not wasting any time. “She’s afraid of scientists and lives on a flying research vessel? Is that healthy?”

“I realize it’s not ideal, but it’s better than the alternative. Saavik is terrified of her mother. Roughly a third of her nightmares feature her in it.”

“I see. Do you believe she would be better off mentally if she lived somewhere other than the Enterprise?”

“In my opinion, no. She is very attached to both the captain and Mr. Spock and regards them as her parents. It did take her a while to warm up to Mr. Spock, but at this point, I believe separating the three of them would do more harm than good.”

“And what is your opinion of Saavik’s relationship to her mother?”

“It’s unhealthy. And abusive. Selevo was the source of a lot of trauma for Saavik. She often felt singled out on Hellguard due to their biological tie. It prevented other children from wanting to get close to her as well, with one notable exception. After Go’vinnai died, she was entirely alone and isolated and bore the brunt of the torture herself—all because of her mother. I believe allowing even partial custody would be a huge mistake and extremely detrimental to Saavik’s wellbeing.”

“Who was Go’vinnai?”

“Her sibling. They died of electric shock back on Hellguard.”

The psychologist’s eyes widened.

* * *

 

“You seem very knowledgeable about Vulcan culture,” the psychologist said.

“Yes, I am, thank you,” Uhura replied, crossing her legs.

“How are Jim and Spock handling that? I know cross-cultural adoptees present a unique challenge. Are they making efforts to keep her in touch with Vulcan culture?”

“Yes, they are.”

“How so?”

“Well, for one thing, she’s not entirely a cross-cultural adoptee. Spock is Vulcan and lived his whole life on the homeworld. And for another, Saavik is half-Romulan and spent her childhood in the Neutral Zone. She was never connected to Vulcan culture to begin with. It’s as new to her as Earth culture.”

“I see. Nevertheless, Vulcan biology alone demands that certain cultural mores be followed. I understand there was an incident with a boy grabbing her hands. Have there been any other cultural misunderstandings?”

Uhura paused. She didn’t want to say it but she didn’t want to lie either. Jim and Spock weren’t the sort of parents who needed to be covered for, in her opinion.

“It was an honest mistake,” she started. “Saavik had just been cleared as medically okay to go off her restricted diet. Jim told her she could have whatever she wanted to celebrate. It ended up being a hot fudge sundae.”

The psychologist gave her a questioning look, and Uhura sighed. “Chocolate has an inebriating effect on Vulcans.”

“Oh!” She wrote the incident down rapidly, her stylus fluttering across the padd. “Did Saavik get… inebriated?”

“A bit,” she conceded.

“Okay. Yes, thank you for telling me.”

* * *

 

Scotty sat down in one of the chairs outside the psychologist’s office, next to Uhura and Bones. “Oy. That was…”

“Trying,” Uhura supplied.

McCoy snorted. “That’s one word for it.”

“I take it it went badly for the two o’ ye as well?” Scotty glanced between them.

“That went worse than tryna get an Alderbaran shellmouth to open up,” McCoy said.

“Aye,” Scotty agreed. Uhura put her head in her hands.


	26. Psych Eval, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a generalized trigger warning for the flashback scene.
> 
> Viltah = derogatory word to describe mixed heritage, essentially a slur

The prosecutor had gotten special permission for Solgar to go up to the stand with Sednar when he testified, as Sednar was too afraid to do it without his twin at his side. The two of them shared the strongest family bond that had ever been seen in all of Vulcan’s history. They were considered a special circumstance.

“Mr. Sednar, can you tell the court how you know the defendant?”

“She’s the commander,” he said in his squeaky ten-year-old voice.

“And what was the nature of your interactions with her?”

He shrugged. “I only met her the one time.”

“What happened that one time?”

“Um…” he faltered. “I don’t have words for it.” He closed his eyes, and suddenly—

_He was in his cage when a moderator approached the bars, followed closely by a woman with swept-back hair and a skirted uniform. He scrambled back further into the corner of his cage, calling out to his twin in the next room._

_“Open it up,” the woman said. The moderator swiped his thumbprint and the magnet locks unclamped, the door swinging inward._

_“Walk,” the moderator said, jerking his head towards the hall. Sednar stood hurriedly, rubbing at the collar around his neck. It made the brand itch._

_He was led down the corridors into one of the testing rooms._ _There was a prisoner cuffed securely to a chair in the center. He was a large man with dirty teeth and lots of tattoos._ _His eyes lit up hungrily when he saw Sednar. He gulped._

_“Meld with him,” the woman snapped. Sednar looked to her helplessly._

_“You heard the Commander,” the moderator said, adjusting his grip on the remote to Sednar’s collar._ _He cautiously approached the prisoner. He was just tall enough to reach_ _his temple without having to crawl in his lap like he used to when he was little, thankfully. He was grateful for the gag around his mouth, sure he would have said something horrible without it._

_The prisoner’s mind was dark and scary and splattered, dripping green and filled with images of little children—_

_“Suggest to him that he remain still,” the commander said. The children had all learned very fast how to listen outside a meld, and Sednar was glad he heard her because she started undoing_ _the prisoner’s restraints. He worked as fast as he could to implant the suggestion in time, hoping with all his might that it would be fast enough, that—_

“Objection!”

The vision snapped off in their minds harshly, giving them all mental whiplash.

“Telepathic visions were deemed inadmissible in court by T’Prev v. Sulon over seventy years ago!”

* * *

The court had to take a thirty minute recess so it could be explained to Sednar why he had to use his words instead, while he insisted that projecting was so much easier, easier than shielding, easier than talking with words that didn’t come naturally.

* * *

 

Spock took his seat in the too-cushiony chair in the psychologist’s office, practically getting swallowed whole by it. The psychologist flipped through her notes.

“So it says in here that you adopted Saavik almost a month and a half after Kirk did. Can you explain that to me?”

“The discrepancy was due to a clerical oversight. We corrected it as soon as it was discovered,” he said. Jim had spent half an hour working with him to make sure he could deliver the lie believably.

“In my experience, the adoption process isn’t so simple that it’s possible to accidentally leave out a parent by just filling out the forms wrong. It’s a lot more complicated and involved than just signing your name on a piece of paper.”

“The Vulcan process differs greatly from that of humans. As a telepathic race, we focus more on a family’s mental bonds and compatibility. The paperwork that follows that process is simple and a mere formality.”

“Oh. I see. I apologize,” she said. She had been projecting Earth norms onto a non-human culture. That was presumptuous of her. “It also says in here that you got married the same day as the adoption? The first one, I mean?”

“Indeed.”

“Can I ask why? Usually people… stagger those two events. Why the rush?”

“Jim and I had been in a committed relationship for months prior. He stated his intent to adopt Saavik, which I supported wholeheartedly, and agreed to raise her alongside him. We then realized that in order to adopt her, he must first bond with a Vulcan citizen, and so we eloped.”

“But Starfleet has no record of a disclosure of fraternization form ever being submitted by you two, at least not prior to the wedding. That’s against regulations.”

“Yes. We broke regulations. It was an affair,” he said.

“Why? Why did you not just… disclose the relationship?”

Spock faltered.

He recovered quickly. “I was seeing someone else at the time.”

The psychologist’s head snapped up. Her face darkened with judgement. “Can I ask who he was? I’ll need to verify with the records.” Her voice was sharp-edged now.

“It was a woman. Nyota Uhura.”

Starfleet did not require formal disclosure of the end of relationships, only the beginning. A new form could be submitted at the beginning of a new relationship and it would take precedence over the previous form, unless it specifically stated a polyamorous situation. On record, his story would hold up perfectly.

“Oh.” Her face changed quickly from judging to pitying with slight judgment on the side. A gay man seeing a woman and in love with another man in secret. The situation was clear, in her eyes.

“I ask for your discretion in this matter,” he said.

“Of course.” She cleared her throat. “You acted as pihlora to all fourteen survivors when they first arrived aboard the Enterprise? Now, it’s to my understanding that that role is typically undertaken by a parent or a trained professional who never takes on more than five students at a time.”

“Your information is correct. However, there were extenuating circumstances at the time. The children required instruction, and I was the only one capable of providing it, so that duty fell to me.”

Her stylus flashed across the datapadd. “I see. Have you had professional training in the telepathic arts?”

“No.”

“And how did the instruction go? Were there any problems?”

“A few. They were minor, and quickly resolved.”

“What was the nature of these problems?”

“Early on, two of the children became emotionally overwhelmed during their lessons and sent out a psionic pulse throughout the ship that proved to be highly disruptive.”

“What exactly did this ‘psionic pulse’ do?”

“It caused emotional transference to the members of the crew.”

“Ah, okay,” she said. “So how did you prevent the children from becoming overwhelmed after that?”

“The captain had the idea to install a monitor in the room from a more emotionally expressive species to observe the children and call for a break before they reached that point again.”

“Okay,” she said. She ran out of room on one padd and opened another to write on. “Were there any other incidents of telepathic overreach?”

* * *

 

Kirk sat nervously in the chair, drumming his fingers on the arms. He crossed his legs, then immediately uncrossed them. He sat bolt upright when the psychologist finally stepped into her office and took a seat.

“So, Kirk. I’ve been hearing a lot about your parenting skills.”

He was a deer frozen in the headlights.

“But first let’s talk about how you act as a husband. I’ve been told you had Spock act as a pihlora for  _all_  of the survivors?”

“Yeah? He volunteered.”

“Usually that task is done one-on-one by a parent teaching their child, or a professional teaching only—at a max—five students at a time. Now you gave Spock—who is untrained—full responsibility for fourteen emotionally fragile children, and this resulted in several of them becoming overwhelmed and lashing out telepathically, which harmed your entire crew in the process.”

Jim blanched. “I had no idea—I would never have—Spock didn’t tell me—Listen, I don’t know jack shit about Vulcan society. If I had known, I  _never_  would have put that much on him. He volunteered to do it! It’s Spock, I thought he could handle it just fine.”

“But he couldn’t. And that was evident almost immediately. Yet you let the lessons continue.”

“I changed the structure a whole lot after that. I put a ton of new rules in place. I may not have known about the pihlora thing, but I could see when something wasn’t working out. I made it so that he couldn’t work with any kid for more than an hour at a time and only twice a day, max, and I put in a non-Vulcan monitor at all times to keep things from getting out of hand.”

The psychologist looked at him intently. “What would you have done if Spock hadn’t volunteered?”

He foundered. “Um… Well, I guess I would have made it an order. It needed to be done. Spock wouldn’t have refused, and he would have told me if he couldn’t do it—or, well, I  _thought_  he would have told me.”

There was silence while she wrote that down.

“I don’t push my crew beyond their limits. I’m not a dictator.”

More silence.

“Now I understand there was an incident involving Spock and Saavik and a mind meld gone wrong? Can you explain that to me in your own words?”

“Oh, that. Um. See, Spock was teaching her how to shield, and that required a mind meld, nothing out of the ordinary, completely standard procedure. Only I had told Saavik to get to know Spock better, and I guess I wasn’t clear, ‘cuz she thought the only way to do that was by forcing the meld deeper.”

“I see. And how was she punished for that?”

“Uh, she wasn’t?”

“You told her that was wrong though, right?”

“Yeah, definitely, and we told her never to do it again.”

“Did you explain why it was wrong?”

“…Not exactly.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “It has come to my attention that Saavik has quite the violent streak. She broke a crewman’s ankle, and another child’s nose.”

“Yeah, well that’s a symptom of PTSD, it’s completely normal for a child who’s been through what she has.”

“I know. But what have you done to teach her healthier ways of dealing with her anger?”

He was at a loss.

“Did you at least tell her that was wrong?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course. We definitely told her never to do it again.”

“And did you explain why violence is unacceptable?”

“Well, no, but I thought the rule itself was enough. For now. I’m going to teach her about right and wrong and all that, I just—things have been so crazy lately. We literally just adopted her. Cut us some slack here.”

“Are you expecting things to slow down any time soon? You’re the captain of a starship. You have a full-time command job, and your husband has two.”

“We make it work,” he said tightly.

She picked up another datapadd and thumbed through her notes. “Is it true that you allow Saavik to be on the bridge with you rather than finding her a babysitter during those hours?”

“She has a babysitter sometimes. Isn’t it a good thing, that we spend a lot of time with our kid?”

“It is,” she conceded. “But is the bridge really the most appropriate place for a child? She could witness some very traumatic things there. Not to mention the potential danger of your enemies realizing she’s the captain’s daughter and trying to get to you through her.”

“I send her away whenever another ship approaches. She never sees any action, and no combatants ever see her.”

“If that were true, then how was she able to witness you being kidnapped by the Vaad’krishan?”

“I sent her away every time  _after_  that.”

“So it took something going wrong for you to even realize something could go wrong?”

He threw his hands up. “I guess! I don’t know what you want me to say here. That I’m a crappy parent? It’s my first time raising a kid. I didn’t have much of a family of my own to look to as an example. I’m making it up as I go here, but listen, I am trying my absolute hardest to do right by Saavik. There is nothing more important to me than that. Just please—please don’t take her away from me.”

* * *

 

“Saavik! There you are. I was looking for you.”

Saavik froze dead in her tracks.

“I just wanted to spend some time with you. I’ve hardly seen you this whole ugly business began, and I spent so long looking for you. I’ve missed you so much since we became separated, you know that, right?” Selevo asked.

Saavik said nothing, remaining motionless, barely breathing.

“Speak, Saavik.” She put just the slightest edge of command into her voice.

“I—um…” She couldn’t say no. She couldn’t tell the Commander no, but what else could she say?

“Saavik.” Her voice was soft now, sad. “Did that nasty human put ideas into your head? What lies did he tell you, hm? That I don’t love you? That I wouldn’t tear this whole Federation apart to be with you again?”

Saavik’s lower lip trembled.

Selevo’s face softened even further and she pulled Saavik in for a hug. Saavik bristled, but she couldn’t—she couldn’t push the Commander away, she couldn’t—

“What is this?” Sarek’s voice cut through sharply. “How dare you touch my granddaughter?”

Selevo stepped back and snarled. “Granddaughter? She is more my child than that viltah son of yours’.”

Sarek’s face was made of steel and his voice icy calm. “Saavik,” he said. “Go be somewhere else.”

She bolted, practically running.

“So,” he said. “You are Selevo, I presume.”

“Indeed,” she said, equally icy.

In true Vulcan fashion, he cut to the chase. “What will it take to make you drop the custody case?”

Her eyes lit up with a predatory glint. “What do you have to offer?”

“I am the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. A powerful man in the Federation. I can offer you almost anything. When it comes to credits—“

“I don’t want your credits,” she spat. “I want to go home.”

He waited.

“Rig the Hellguard trial.”


	27. Parenting Skills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last 'slow' chapter before things start getting interesting again, I promise.
> 
> Lunikkh ta'vik = old Vulcan insult, means poisoner of wells  
> bath'pa = a curse/damn  
> ket-cheleb = destroyer/blood-drinker  
> tiar merra = a Vulcan curse word that was deemed too offensive to directly translate  
> skamaya = attraction  
> sanosh = pleasure  
> kobat'es = weakness  
> shaukaush = passion

“Bones, am I a bad parent?” Jim burst into the doctor’s slightly-crappy hotel room.

“What?” He sat up and blinked blearily. He had just fallen asleep. Of course the kid chose that moment to do this.

“Me and Spock had our psych evals after the trial today and mine went horrible,” he said, gesticulating wildly.

“It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Oh really?” he asked. “At one point she asked me what healthy coping skills I was teaching Saavik and I didn’t even _have_ an answer!”

“So? You’re not her therapist.”

“Yeah, but I’m supposed to be helping her! If I can’t do that, then what even am I to her? An overglorified babysitter?”

“No, you are not. Good lord,” he said. “Look. Raisin’ a kid is a bit like ridin’ a horse. Sometimes you’re gonna do stupid shit that leaves the both of you in a whole mess of problems. That ain’t what tests ya though. The real test is how well you get yourself outta that mess and move on. Just ‘cuz you screwed something up doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.”

“Thanks, Bones,” he said, giving the other man a side-armed hug. “Still, though. I’ve been doing the bare minimum with Saavik. I just give her rules and expect them to be followed without explaining why. And half the time I don’t even do that.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I’ve been too lax with her. She keeps hurting other people and I haven’t punished her for it once. Like, I told her not to do it again, but then she does it again and I say the same thing and did you know I haven’t even told her violence is wrong? I didn’t even realize until the psychologist…” he sighed.

“What do you mean, she keeps hurting other people? Wasn’t it just that one time with that little boy?”

“No, there was also that time with Sulu, back on the bridge…”

“Oh, right.”

“And there was that time with Spock and the mind meld.”

“Mind meld?”

“Yeah, one time she forced a training meld too deep and kinda hurt him. Psychic assault. That’s illegal on Vulcan, you know.”

“Shit, kid.”

“Plus one time I gave her chocolate and apparently that gets Vulcans drunk and I’m a shitty parent for not looking into that stuff _before_ adopting a kid from another species.”

“That was just a mistake. That could’ve happened to anyone.”

“And the psychologist took issue with her being allowed on the bridge all the time.”

“That’s only caused problems _once,_ and you’ve added new rules since then. It’s not like you just let the kid do whatever she wants.”

“It pretty much is, Bones,” he said. “I guess I’m just—uncomfortable with the idea of bossing her around. Ya know? Saavik lived her whole life in captivity, her every move dictated by someone else. I don’t want to be one more person to do that to her. I’m not—I’m not Selevo.”

“And Saavik knows that,” Bones said. “But there’s a difference between being a dictator and being her father. Kids need rules, Jim. You need to have balance.”

“You make it sound easy,” he grumbled.

“Hey, I’m the last person to call raising a kid easy. It isn’t. It’s a tough go, and you’re gonna have it tougher than most. You’re raising an abused Romulan. She’s bound to have her own unique set of problems, but that doesn’t mean they’re insurmountable. I’m sure she can handle them if you just give her time. You both can.”

Jim nodded, silent. 

“But you can’t do it alone. This is a conversation you should be having with your husband. Figuring out how you’re gonna parent? You need to do that stuff together.”

* * *

 

“Hey, Spock. We need to talk,” Jim said upon entering their shared hotel room. Spock set down his datapadd and Jim took a seat next to him on the couch.

“What is the matter you wish to discuss?” he asked.

“Okay,” Jim took a breath. “It’s about those interviews. Wait, first off, how did yours go? I could really use some good news.”

“I believe the psychologist believed our lie about the nature of our marriage. However, throughout the course of the discussion, it became necessary to tell her that we were having a secret affair months prior to our marriage, during which time I was also courting Nyota.”

“How the hell did you get to that?” Jim asked.

“The psychologist wanted to know why we married so suddenly and with no prior disclosure of fraternization. It was the best explanation I could come up with without showing any hesitation.”

He grinned. “So what you’re telling me here is, you panicked.”

“I did not panic.”

“Oh my god, you totally panicked! This is great! I mean, not the part about pretending to cheat on Uhura, but the you panicking thing? That’s great.”

“I fail to see the logic in such a conclusion.”

“Oh come on, you know I love it when you let your human side show through. I think it’s cute,” he said.

Spock did not frown. “’Cute’ is a diminutive descriptor used primarily on small or young creatures such as tribbles. As I am an adult man, and also bigger than you, I do not feel it is accurate in this instance.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah, you’re definitely cute.” He seemed to realize what he was saying, and cleared his throat. “Anyway. Um, about the interviews. So, mine went horrible, and it made me realize some things. We haven’t really been doing our best with Saavik. We’re just kinda letting her run wild, and that’s not fair to her. We need to, like, actually have rules and stuff.”

“Please explain.”

And so Jim did, and Spock listened. He did. Jim made many gestures when he spoke, and Spock found himself watching his hands quite intently. His fingers were sturdy, calloused. Rough. At least, he imagined they would be, that they would feel rough on his hands, on his skin, sliding over him, gripping him, making him come.

His lips, too, moved a lot as he spoke. Of course. That’s how speaking is done, of course. His lips were plump and soft and Spock could _remember_ how they felt on him and he thought of all the same things he had thought about his hands, and there was his human side again, his human side that Jim professed to like. He imagined he _would_ like it, to be kissed breathless, to taste him so intimately, to—

He usually had better control than this. 

The bond, he concluded. It must be the bond.

* * *

 

They went and they had a long talk with Saavik, who nearly started crying, which made Jim nearly start crying and made Spock very uncomfortable and unsure what to do.

Saavik apologized profusely for getting them in trouble and for being so reactive and Jim rushed to assure her that it wasn’t her fault, that her parents had gotten in trouble because of their own mistakes, that she wasn’t going to get taken away over this, don’t worry.

But she did worry. And she seemed deeply ashamed that her emotional reactions were causing such problems.

So Spock proposed a solution and her face lit up like a sun.

Starting tomorrow, Saavik would be learning proper Vulcan behavior and methods of control. 

Now her imitations of Spock could have a purpose.

* * *

 

“So, Ms. Charvanek, I’ve been hearing a lot about you,” the psychologist said.

“I imagine you have,” she said, smiling politely.

“Let’s get right down to business. Now, my most pressing concern is these abuse allegations. What do you have to say about that?”

“I never abused Saavik or any other child. It’s as simple as that.”

“Then how do you explain the Hellguard trial? I know it’s all strictly confidential and I’m probably not even supposed to know this much, but nine of the fourteen survivors are testifying against you.”

“That’s all a misunderstanding. I was involved in Hellguard, yes, but it was completely involuntary. They were threatening my family unless I played along.”

“Your family?”

“Yes. Saavik, Go’vinnai, and their father.”

“Their father? Who was that?”

“A captured Vulcan by the name of Shollon. I… became taken with him while he was prisoner there. I did the best I could to save him, but—“ she bit her lip, eyes watering. When she spoke again, her voice was hushed, like she was sharing some terrible secret. “They killed him. Or rather—they made me—they made me choose. They said I was too invested in the project. They said… they said it was him or one of the children.”

The psychologist put a hand over her mouth.

 “Everything I did, I had to do. I tried—I tried to protect the children as much as I could. I looked out for them, I tried to— to keep them from the worst of it, to…” She shook her head. The psychologist handed her a tissue.

* * *

 

“Hello, Saavik. I’m just going to ask you some questions about your parents, is that alright?” she asked. Saavik nodded.

She had just picked up nodding. Jim had told her it was a good trick for getting people to understand that she was listening even if she had nothing to say. She loved the idea. Humans were smart for inventing it, in her mind.

“Are you happy living with Jim and Spock?”

“Yes!”

She smiled and wrote that down. “Do you feel safe with them?”

“Uh-huh. Except sometimes.”

“When do you feel unsafe?” she asked, concerned.

“When I have nightmares. When Jim got kidnapped. When I have to go in the turbolift.”

“Oh,” she said, backspacing. “Do you always have enough food to eat with them?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you alone a lot on the Enterprise?”

“No? There’s lots of people there.”

“Yes, but are you lonely?”

“No. I have Tommy, and Daddy, and Spock, and Uhura-an and Bones-an and Scotty-an.”

“Do you think of both Jim and Spock as your fathers?”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t call Spock that.”

“No.”

She wrote that down. “Okay. Now let’s talk about Selevo. Your mother. How do you feel about her?”

“She’s scary.”

“Why?”

“She hurted me. A lot.”

“How so?”

“She would zap me and make me meld with scary people and take away my food when I couldn’t do things good enough.”

“She would take away your food?”

“Yeah. One time she told me to find something in someone’s brain as fast as I could, only I couldn’t do it, so she made me go to bed without dinner. Or breakfast the next day. Or lunch. It happened a lot.”

She scribbled that down on her padd. “Did you feel like you received special attention from her while on Hellguard?"

“Yeah. She was mean.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She didn’t treat me the same as the other kids. She wanted me to be better. She would make me do things that even the big kids couldn’t do, and when I failed, I always got punished worse. It wasn’t fair. She was mean. 

“I see.”

* * *

 

Sgon took the stand defiantly, with fire in his eyes, looking very decidedly un-Vulcan and a bit like he wanted to murder someone—Selevo, specifically.

He could almost pass for human in that moment. He had elected to keep his scruffy haircut rather than adopt the traditional Vulcan style, and it hid his ears and eyebrows. He had, at least, shaved for the hearing that day, however. Spock looked at him and was struck with how much he reminded him of a teenage Sybok.

Jim took the seat next to him, and the proximity was intoxicating. He could smell cologne and aftershave and the intangible scent of _him._ For a moment, Spock had the illogical urge to throw him down across the bench, the rip off that ridiculous suit with too many layers and run his teeth and tongue over whatever skin he could find. He would take Jim right there, in front of everyone, so that the whole galaxy would know that he was his and no one else’s—mated, bonded, untouchable. _His._

He cleared his throat and refocused his attention.

“Can you identify the defendant?”

“Yes. That’s Commander Charvanek Selevo of the Romulan Fleet.”

“And how do you know that?”

“That’s how the guards and moderators back on Hellguard addressed her.”

“I see. And how would you describe her interactions with them?”

“She was their boss. She would order them around, and they would listen,” he said, his voice venomous.

“What sort of orders would she give them?”

“One time she—that lunikkh ta’vik had the guards zap me until I gave this prisoner visions of his pain. It turned him into a zombie, essentially, he wasn’t a real person anymore. He just did whatever I told him.

“And the brands on the back of our necks. That was her idea. That way if we ever escaped to some other part of the Empire, we could be easily identified and found again. She wanted to make sure specifically that it was something we couldn’t get removed and would be in an obvious place. She considered putting them on our bath’pa foreheads, but then she decided there wasn’t enough room,” he said through clenched teeth.

“How do you know this?”

“She _bragged_ about it to me!”

“Can anyone else attest to this fact?”

“Just some guards back on Hellguard.”

“So, no one we can contact. I see.”

“I’m telling you, that tiar merra ket-cheleb wanted to see us in pain! She enjoyed it!”

The hearing continued for hours more, but Spock found himself unable to focus on what was being said. He found himself instead focusing on Jim’s hair, Jim’s skin, Jim’s muscles underneath that confounded suit jacket.

Jim’s hands.

His lips.

His control was usually better than this. It should not take this much effort to simply focus. As it would be unacceptable to enter a meditative state here, he instead began quoting the Teachings of Surak to steady himself.

_Skamaya 8:12—Physical attraction is a concern of the body. It has no place in the mind._

He wanted nothing more than to take his hand in his and claim him in the Vulcan way—

_Sanosh 1:87—Wide experience increases wisdom, provided the experience is not sought purely for the stimulation of sensation._

What was wrong with him that he was thinking this way? It was un-Vulcan. Sensory stimulation. He was not some base creature, driven only by primal urges.

The urge to throw Jim to the ground and fuck him until he forgot his own name—

_Kobat’es 9:43—Purge your weakness as one purges poison from a system._

And this was weakness indeed. He wondered if Jim could tell he was blocking the bond, if he paid that much attention to it.

The blocked bond was making things so much worse. His body was screaming out for touch and his mind for contact, but he refused them both. He could not.

_Shaukaush 2:56—Passion burns like fire, destroying all it touches. Do not let it consume you._

He was in pon farr.


	28. Pon Farr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time writing a sex scene, so please tell me what you think!
> 
> Nash-veh ket'lio = I burn, except it's not conjugated because I don't know how to conjugate Vulcan verbs and I don't care enough to look it up

He had to tell Jim. The question was how.

After carefully considering all the possible awkward ways that could play out, he decided not to tell Jim. Instead, he just… unblocked the bond. Jim was able to feel it then. Desire more intense than anything he had felt in his life, than anything any human has ever experienced. The sensation of being so turned on that you could quite literally think of nothing else—that you couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could barely manage a conversation, much less a coherent one.

To have so much desire that you might die because of it.

It was one hell of a feeling. He could tell instantly that it wasn’t his own.

He looked to Spock in wonder.

_Something you wanna tell me?_

_I believe you already know the answer._

_What—what the hell. What is this? Is this that pon farr thing?_

_Affirmative._

_Oh,_ he swallowed. _Well then. So what do we have to do?_

_We must return to New Vulcan immediately._

_We can’t, not in the middle of both trials._

_I will be dead within one week if we do not._

_Oh,_ he thought. _Looks like we’re going to New Vulcan then._

* * *

 

They made their excuses to a very pissed-off Wodenstein and left Saavik with Sarek, who didn’t ask any questions or give any comments when they said they were going to New Vulcan. They didn’t say anything to their bridge crew, because what could they say? They would have questions, but Jim and Spock couldn’t give any answers.

So they slipped quietly onto a passenger shuttle without saying any goodbyes or announcing their departure.

Sarek would handle it, presumably. Bones would be mad, but he’ll get over it.

The shuttle ride was first class, expedited, on Spock’s dime, unfortunately. Jim protested heavily because Spock was the one who was fucking dying over here; he shouldn’t have to worry about stuff like that. But Spock didn’t seem to be particularly keen on listening to Jim or being aware of his surroundings or remembering the things he said and did. He reminded Jim of a druggie, to be honest. He was dazed, out of it, his mental faculties shot, and yet he was surprisingly determined when it came to one thing: getting to New Vulcan.

Jim replayed Spock’s words from the day he had explained everything in his head over and over.

_There are precedents in nature. The giant eel birds of Regulus V. Once each eleven years they must return to the caverns where they hatched. On your Earth, the salmon. They must return to that one stream where they were born to spawn—or die in trying._

He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Spock would do _anything_ to get to New Vulcan. The telepathic web of his people’s bonds to each other was calling to him. He wasn’t thinking clearly, and Jim knew that very intimately. He could hear his thoughts—disjointed, fragmented, nonsensical. Sometimes a green, wordless veil of pain that dropped over his mind.

Pain and desire and burning fire scorching _nash-veh ket’lio._

Nash-veh ket’lio. It kept running through Spock’s mind, through their bond, like a mantra, a horrible, pained mantra. It was the only thought that was consistently coherent. He seemed hardly to be aware of it, much less in control of it.

He spent the entire trip in their room, unable to get up and leave for any reason. He stayed curled up in bed, a sweating, feverish mess. Jim kept trying to help, to bring him water and damp cloths for his forehead, but Spock wouldn’t have it and told him to keep his distance.

‘Told’ was perhaps not the most accurate word. ‘Screamed in a fit of rage while throwing things until Jim backed out of the room’ was more along the lines of what had actually happened.

Jim was staying in a separate room, on Spock’s adamant request.

He personally thought that didn’t make any sense, but then, Spock wasn’t making too much sense at all lately. He didn’t know what the guy was planning on doing once they got to New Vulcan. Jim knew for a fact that he wanted to jump his bones, and he was perfectly okay with that, but for some reason, Spock wasn’t.

The facts:

  1. Spock was in pon farr.
  2. He had to have sex or he was going to literally die.
  3. He wanted to have sex with Jim, specifically.
  4. _“Pon farr requires mental release as well as physical. Only a bondmate will do.”_
  5. Jim was perfectly willing here.



“Spock, I don’t get it. We’re going to have to have sex anyway. Maybe… doing it now would help alleviate some of your symptoms,” he said.

He looked at him in confusion. “We will not be engaging in coitus.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because we will not.”

“What’s your plan then? To just die?”

“No,” he said. “I plan to contact a mind healer to break our bond and then form a new bond in the arranged manner typical of my culture.”

Oh.

Of course. Of course Spock would want to go through pon farr with someone he could be actually married to. Soonest possible opportunity, wasn’t that what he said? Well, this was that. 

Time to get a divorce.

* * *

 

They sat in the waiting room, Jim perfectly still and frozen while Spock shifted impatiently, in an odd reversal of how they usually were.

A nurse stepped out. “Healer T’Jun will see you now. Follow me.”

They did.

She led them up a narrow staircase to an airy white room where the healer sat on a meditation rug in the center. There was no other furniture aside from the fire pot burning incense. Taking Spock’s lead, they both sat cross-legged before the healer.

She opened her eyes. The irises were almost as dark as the pupils, indiscernible, as dark as her hair.

“What brings you here today?” she asked, voice heavy with that stilted inflection most Vulcans seemed to have.

“We wish to break our bond, healer,” Spock said.

“Why."

They floundered, for just a moment.

“It’s a looong story,” Jim said.

“The bond was made under false pretenses. My Time has come, and I wish to take a different bondmate, one of legitimacy.”

“What makes you consider this bond illegitimate? It formed correctly, did it not?”

“It did. However, it was only created so that my bondmate could attain Vulcan citizenship for legal reasons.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Ninety-seven days ago.”

“So the bond has had time to settle then. A new one would not,” she said. “You have already entered pon farr?”

“Affirmative.”

“How long ago?”

“Four days.”

“You do not have long. The blood fever has already fallen,” she said. “Let me examine the bond.”

Spock presented his head to her and she put her hand over his meld points. Her touch was light, expert, barely felt. She pulled back after a few seconds.

“The bond is healthy. You two are extremely compatible,” she said. “I will not be responsible for breaking it. It is against my oath as a healer.”

“What?” Jim asked.

“Breaking a bond such as yours would put you both in immense pain and danger. The link is healthy, if a bit neglected. You are fortunate to have found a bond such as this; that level of compatibility is rare. A new bond formed so soon would not have time to settle and it would pale in comparison. It is better for your health to maintain the current one.”

“You can’t do that. You can’t just… _refuse_ to divorce us,” Jim said. This was ridiculous and he didn’t know why he was even protesting, but whatever happened to freedom of choice? Did they not have that on New Vulcan?

“I can and I will, given that it is in your best interests,” she said. “I recommend increased physical contact and perhaps a mind meld. The experience of pon farr should be beneficial. Do not continue neglecting your bond as you have been; it is not healthy to do so.”

“Healer T’Jun. With all due respect, the bond will be broken eventually regardless of your help or not. I would prefer to sever it now rather than later and I would prefer you do it rather than an inferior healer, but make no mistake, it will be severed. Please consider this.”

“No conscientious Vulcan healer would sever a bond under your circumstances. Accept reality, son of Sarek.”

“Then we will find an unconscientious healer,” he said defiantly.

“Spock,” Jim said, a bit concerned. He really didn’t want some shady guy in a back alley mucking around in his brain. 

“The plak tow has impaired your logic. You are behaving foolishly, son of Sarek. I will hear no more of your words,” she turned to Jim. “Go to the place of the ancients on the sands of Vulcan That Was and let your mate have his way with you. If you do not, he will surely die.”

* * *

 

Turns out the place of the ancients on the sands of Vulcan That Was was some dusty circle mesa thing on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by cliffs, of course.

Because where else would Vulcans have their ceremonial sex rituals?

The walk up took like an hour and Jim felt like he was dying by the end of it. He had a tri-ox with him, but he didn’t want to take that until they got to the top because he figured that was when he’d need the most stamina.

Spock didn’t look like he was faring much better, but then, he was literally dying, so.

Neither of them spoke a single word between leaving the healer’s office and reaching the top of the mountain. Jim was feeling nervous and jittery and sort of sick to his stomach and just generally miserable. This was going to suck. This was not how he wanted to have sex with Spock. He must have imagined it a thousand times, but never like this.

He stabbed himself in the neck with the hypo and released the plunger.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said. Which was a great attitude to go into having sex with.

God.

Spock was standing a good ten feet away and not moving an inch closer.

“Spock?”

No response.

Jim sighed. “You know what, fine. Whatever. If you would rather die than have sex with me, then that’s just great. Knock yourself out.”

“It is not that I do not desire intercourse with you,” he said, looking genuinely puzzled.

“Then what is it? What’s the big problem, Spock? What is it that makes me so abhorrent to you?”

“You are not abhorrent to me in the least. That is the problem,” he said. “As you have made perfectly clear, we cannot engage in a romantic relationship. I believe it is better never to have known you in this way than to have you once and never again.”

Jim’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t help it. Spock—of all people—was putting emotions into sex. He was assigning it unnecessary connotations and meaning and Jim was the one who was going to have to talk him out of it.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he said. “It’s just sex. Just two people getting off on each other. Think of it like that. It’s necessary. Like when we hold hands in front of reporters or something. Necessary. Doesn’t mean anything.”

In that moment, Spock looked devastated.

Jim felt pity and guilt wash over him because _dear god._

“I mean—God, that wasn’t—Spock. Okay. You don’t mean nothing to me, okay, that is the farthest thing from what I meant. It’s just the physical stuff that means nothing. God, I—I wish you didn’t mean as much to me as you do, that would make things a whole lot easier. Spock, you have no idea how—“ he sucked in a breath. “This isn’t how I wanted this to go either.”

He looked up at him. “How did you want this to go?”

He licked his lips. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m loving how secretly kinky Vulcan rituals are, but I’d much rather we had sex just because we both wanted to.”

“And you do want to?”

“Well, yeah. Thought that was obvious. You’re the one who’s been opposed to this whole thing.”

“I am opposed to forcing you into something you do not desire. I am opposed to any situation in which you believe you cannot say no. The idea of you doing this out of _obligation_ is what I find abhorrent.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m not here because I have to be, Spock, I’m here because I want to be.”

He looked at him levelly. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” he said, walking closer, which made Spock tense up. He stopped. “Are you?”

For a moment, he was sure he was going to say no.

“Yes.”

Jim stepped closer and took Spock’s hand in his own. He slid two fingers down the length of it and then back up the other side. Spock’s breathing hitched.

“Good,” Jim said, voice low. “Because now I can do this.” He brought Spock’s hand up to his lips and glided one finger into his mouth. His tongue flicked the tip of it, and Spock gasped. Jim grinned and slipped another finger in, then sucked hard.

Suddenly he was on his back, staring up at the sky, then Spock filled his field of vision and brought his lips down to meet his with bruising force. He held Jim down with one hand and yanked his pants free with the other, taking Jim’s length in his hand and stroking hard, the friction perfect, the pressure intense. Jim moaned beneath him.

He grabbed at the front of Spock’s shirt and yanked him down until their lips met again, and Jim devoured his mouth, pushing, exploring with his tongue, feeling every millimeter of Spock’s mouth with his. He ran his tongue over Spock’s and sucked in his bottom lip, lavishing it.

He wrangled Spock out of his shirt and ran his hands all over him. Spock let go of Jim’s dick for a moment, and he whined in protest, then Spock fully divested him of his clothes, actually ripping his shirt off. Jim’s hands fumbled for the fastenings of his pants.

Spock’s hand came around and a finger went into his hole, stretching and widening and thrusting. He hit that one spot, and Jim gasped and tightened around his finger reflexively.

He pulled away slightly and reached for his pants, and Spock growled low in his throat. “Relax, I’m just getting lube,” he said, tossing him the bottle and a condom. Spock threw them to the ground and ignored them.

Fine then. Jim would have to do this himself, cause clearly Spock wasn’t thinking logically.

He reached again for the lube, and Spock chose that moment to bite down on his neck deliciously, and Jim’s presence of mind was almost gone, but he managed to get slick on his fingers and shove Spock’s away to replace with his own. Spock looked equal parts offended and turned on. And then turned on won out.

He growled again and suddenly Spock’s fully hard erection was there and Jim moved his hand quickly away to allow entrance and then there was pressure and Spock was there and he was in him. Jim bucked his hips and Spock grabbed onto them and thrusted in again and again and again, and his hand came up to Jim’s meld points, and—

he was drowning in ecstasy, like being wrapped up in pure joy—

gold and silver light swirling all around and running through them—

the feeling of falling, perpetually, never reaching the ground—

adrenaline and euphoria in one intoxicating mix, and—

He didn’t realize that he or Spock had come until it was over and Spock collapsed in the sand next to him, liquid, and Jim’s name finished echoing around the mountaintops.


	29. Meaning

They used a dermal regenerator to fix Jim’s split lip and the bruises on his hips.  
  
They rented separate cabins again on the shuttle ride home, even though there was technically no reason to now. There was also no reason not to.  
  
It was time to go back to reality and the state of together and not together, constantly reminded of what could be and what never could be.  
  
They managed to go the entire four-day shuttle ride without ever once looking each other in the eye. They only spoke when necessary, and barely spent any time together.  
  
Saavik and Sarek were waiting for them at the starbase terminal when they arrived. Saavik rushed forward and tackled Jim in a hug.  
  
“Where were you? Grandpa Sarek wouldn’t tell me anything!”  
  
“We just had to go to New Vulcan for a bit to take care of some boring adult stuff,” he said smoothly.  
  
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”  
  
He blinked at her in exaggerated surprise. “You want to do boring adult stuff? ‘Cause if so, I have a mountain of paperwork—“  
  
“No!” she said quickly. Jim laughed and ruffled her hair.  
  
“Thank you for taking care of her for us, Father,” Spock said to Sarek.  
  
“It was no trouble,” he said, his eyes smiling.  
  
“We had fun!” Saavik said.  
  
“Did you now?” Jim asked. “Come on. Let’s go get ice cream and you can tell us all about your week.”

* * *

Jim picked at his dinner, distracted. It was yet another Wodenstein-mandated date night, and this was the worst one they’d had yet. They had seen a movie before this, which was convenient, because silence was expected there.  
  
Now, though? Now it was just awkward.  
  
It had been twenty minutes since either of them last spoke. And the only reason they had spoken twenty minutes ago was to place their orders.  
  
Jim sighed and set down his fork. “Spock, we need to talk.”  
  
“That is patently untrue. Conversation is not in any way necessitated.”  
  
“Spock.” Jim looked at him levelly. Spock swallowed. Considered his options. Nodded. Jim continued, “It doesn’t have to mean anything. We can just pretend it never happened and go back to normal. This doesn’t have to change things between us. You shouldn’t let it.”  
  
“That is the problem.”  
  
“Don’t tell me _you’re_ having trouble compartmentalizing.”  
  
“That is not what I was referring to.”  
  
“Then what were you referring to?”  
  
“The problem is that this changes nothing.”  
  
Jim stared at him. “And you wanted it to.”  
  
Spock didn’t answer, and that in itself was an answer.  
  
“Spock, I want this as much as you do, but I’m not gonna risk Saavik’s entire future on a fling. What if we try this and it works out, but only for a couple of years? What then? Another custody trial, this time it’s us against each other? Come on. Think of it logically. It’s not a good idea.”  
  
“Logic is not everything,” he snapped.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Even to Vulcans,” he said. “When my father married my mother, he did it out of love.”  
  
Jim’s heart stopped in his chest at the implications. Maybe he was going crazy, but it almost sounded like Spock was saying that he loved him. That he should ignore logic in favor of how he felt.  
  
Pure panic pulled poisoned words out of him, and he snarled, “Yeah, well I only got married for citizenship, so if that’s all you have to say, then I think we’re done here.”  
  
He pushed back from the table and fled the restaurant, not running, but close to it.  
  
Spock loved him? Wait, did Spock love him? He never actually said that. Jim was assuming things. Maybe he was assuming too much.  
  
What if Spock did love him?  
  
Well, then Jim just blew it big time, saying things like that.  
  
Why did he say that?  
  
He had panicked. He had been afraid and it had been too much and so he did what he always did and pushed people away.  
  
What if Spock did love him? What then? Did Jim love him back?  
  
No. That was ridiculous. He had affection for Spock and the bond had his libido dialed up to ten where he was concerned, but that was it. Physical attraction and friendship that could be something more under different circumstances. It was a crush. It was infatuation. It would fade away.  
  
If he acted on it, he would only end up breaking Spock’s heart and he couldn’t do that to him.  
  
How the fuck did people know if they were in love or not? Jim had never been in love before. He wouldn’t even know how to recognize it. Sure, he’d had relationships before, but nothing this serious, not even close. He’d never been this committed before.  
  
Was he committed? Until Saavik’s eighteenth birthday, yeah. And then what? He and Spock shook hands and parted ways for good? He couldn’t imagine that happening. No. One way or another, they were bound to each other for life, at the very least through Saavik.  
  
He couldn’t deal with this right now. It was making his head hurt. He decided to head back to the hotel room and go to bed and hope and pray that he was already asleep by the time Spock crawled in beside him.

* * *

“Just where the hell were you? You think you can just disappear for a week without telling anybody where or why?” Bones said, the second he was within hearing range of Jim.  
  
“It was for medical leave,” Jim said evasively.  
  
“Medical leave? And you couldn’t treat it here?” He was already pulling out a scanner—did he always carry those things around with him?—and waving it in Jim’s face. “What happened? The scanner isn’t—“  
  
“Bones, I’m fine. It wasn’t me, it was Spock.”  
  
“Spock?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That still doesn’t explain why you had to leave.”  
  
“It was some weird telepathy thing. He had to see a Vulcan mind healer, a human doctor wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”  
  
“So you just up and left in the middle of both trials? It couldn’t have waited?”  
  
Jim looked at him. “No, it couldn’t have.”  
  
“Oh,” he said, surprised. Then, “I guess the rest of us tend to forget that even Vulcans aren’t indestructible.”  
  
No, they really weren’t.

* * *

Wodenstein slapped a gossip rag down on her desk. It was open to a full page spread featuring a photo of Jim storming away from the table, face furious, leaving behind a devastated looking Spock.  
  
“You disappear for nine days, and then the second you come back, you do this! The press is convinced you split up!”  
  
“Our ‘disappearance’ was unavoidable,” Spock said.  
  
“Yeah, I know. Your ever-mysterious medical leave that put the entire trial on hold,” she rolled her eyes. “You’re lucky that whatever it was didn’t happen any later, otherwise it’d be cutting it pretty close for when Saavik is due to testify in the Hellguard trial, and you can bet your asses they’re putting that little girl up on the stand whether her parents are there in the audience or not. You know,” she leaned forward, resting her hands on her desk. “I’m beginning to think you two aren’t taking this case seriously.”  
  
“Of course we’re taking it seriously!” Jim said.  
  
“Oh really?” she asked. “Because so far I have asked you to do one thing—one thing!—and you have failed spectacularly. All I asked was that you don’t damage your reputations any worse than they already are, and instead you decide to ditch all your responsibilities for a week and then have what looks like the world’s worst breakup!”  
  
“That’s not what happened!” Jim protested.  
  
“I don’t care what happened! I care what it looks like. And it looks bad. You two seem unreliable and unstable. Your only hope at this point is that a miracle happens or Selevo looks even worse.”

* * *

“Father, what’s a park?” Saavik asked Spock.  
  
“A park is a recreational area set in the natural world. They are frequently enjoyed by many species of the galaxy, most notably Orions,” he said.  
  
“Oh,” she said. “What do you do there?”  
  
“That depends on a number of factors, including personal preference. Some parks contain playground equipment for children, much like that of your favored recreation room aboard the Enterprise.”  
  
“But bigger and cooler,” Jim said.  
  
“Can we go to one?” Saavik asked.  
  
“Sure, I don’t see why not. I think they’ve got one here at the starbase,” he said.  
  
“Can we invite Tommy?” she asked, now excited.  
  
“Sure,” Jim said. Saavik grinned and clapped her hands.  
  
“I can handle this, you go on home. I’ll see you at dinner,” he said to Spock, his voice crisp and professional, like he used when things got tense on the bridge.  
  
“You’re leaving?” Saavik turned to Spock with big watery eyes. He melted.  
  
“No, of course not. We shall both accompany you to the park,” he found himself saying.

* * *

Karen insisted on coming too, and then sat on the bench farthest away from them. She probably thought Saavik was going to hurt Tommy again. Or maybe she just plain didn’t trust Jim and Spock’s parenting; they didn’t know.  
  
They were silent on their shared bench, sitting as far away from each other as possible, both staring dead ahead and watching as the children played.  
  
They both started to speak at the same moment.  
  
“You may—“  
  
“No, no, you go first,” Jim waved him off.  
  
“Very well. I wish to tell you that I am sorry if what I said yesterday caused you discomfort. That was not my intention.”  
  
“Spock, you don’t have to apologize, I’m the one who was acting like an ass yesterday. I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean it like that, you know that right?”  
  
He still looked stiff as a board. He had heard Jim’s thoughts following their conversation. He knew what conclusions he had drawn. More importantly, he knew what conclusions Jim hadn’t drawn.  
  
Spock had admitted to an emotion that Jim didn’t return, an emotion as intense and all-consuming as fire.  
  
“I ask that you please disregard all the statements that I made yesterday and any implications that you derived from them. It was a mistake to say those things. I misspoke.”  
  
“Spock,” he said softly. “It’s okay. It’s fine if you feel that way, you’re allowed to feel things. I’m just—I’m not sure I feel the same way. And even if I did…”  
  
“I understand,” he nodded. “I should not have expected anything to change. That was foolish of me. I ask for your forgiveness.”  
  
“Stop—please stop apologizing, it’s just really sad and you don’t need to. You didn’t do anything wrong. I did.”  
  
Spock opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Saavik and Tommy came bounding over. “Can me and Saavik have a sleepover?”  
  
“Did you ask your mother first?” Jim asked.  
  
“Yeah! She said it was okay if you said it was okay.”  
  
He looked to Spock, who nodded. “That is acceptable. You may.”  
  
“Yay!” The kids ran away, squealing and laughing, over to Karen.  
  
“Well. Looks like we’re done here,” Jim chuckled. He rose and offered his hand to Spock, who merely stared at it. He dropped his hand, face burning. “So! Back to the hotel?”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
They walked back in silence, a respectable distance between them. Until they got within sight of the hotel room and saw three reporters clustered outside their door. Recording devices were shoved in their faces as they approached.  
  
“Captain Kirk! Care to comment about your alleged separation?”  
  
“How is this going to affect your ongoing custody case? Are you now suing each other as well?”  
  
How did they even find out about that? Was nothing private anymore? It was enough to make a guy wish he wasn’t the savior of Earth.  
  
Jim grabbed Spock’s hand and pulled him close, weaving them through the reporters until they reached the door. “We aren’t separated,” he said. “That was all just a misunderstanding and a badly-timed photo. Nothing is wrong between us, and we’re sticking together.”  
  
The reporters clamored with more questions, but they slipped inside before they had the opportunity to screw things up even further.  
  
The door closed behind them with a whoosh and Jim realized he was still holding on to Spock’s hand. He dropped it and cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sorry about that.”  
  
“It is fine. It was necessary to maintain the pretense of our romantic involvement.”  
  
“And that makes it logical, does it?”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
Jim smiled. They were still standing very close to each other, he noticed, but neither of them moved away. Their fingers still hummed with the latent electricity of their bond, an intoxicating, heady feeling. Addictive.  
  
“You know it doesn’t have to mean anything, right?” he said suddenly.  
  
“I am aware of that.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
Desire was flooding across their bond, and neither of them was sure who it was coming from. But then, the point of origin didn’t really matter, as they were both feeling it now.  
  
“It wouldn’t be logical to continue neglecting our bond like this,” Jim said suddenly.  
  
“Given that physical contact has no emotional connotations,” Spock agreed.  
  
“Right. Doctor’s orders, and all that.”  
  
Spock hummed in agreement, and there wasn’t much chance to say anything else, because then Jim was kissing him and he felt like he was exploding with the sensation and suddenly he was walking them backward to the bed.


	30. Final Statements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s only three or four chapters left after this, I can’t believe this fic is finally wrapping up
> 
> Warnings for mentions of rape and mass murder in the first section

“Ms. Charvanek, how do you plead?”  
  
“Not guilty,” she said.  
  
“So you didn’t abuse any children?”  
  
“I did not.”  
  
“Then what do you call what you did to them on Hellguard?”  
  
“My job. My job that was perfectly legal and government-sanctioned within my Empire, over which you have no jurisdiction.”  
  
“Objection! Federation courts have jurisdiction over any legal dispute involving Federation citizens, and you were experimenting on Vulcans.”  
  
“False. 231 of those subjects were Romulan children.”  
  
“ _Half_ -Romulan. Hybrids have an automatic claim to multiple homeworlds.”  
  
The judge banged the gavel. “This will cease. The case is continuing.”  
  
The prosecutor smirked. “Now about those 300 other test subjects you had. The captive Vulcans from four missing research ships. How exactly did they come to be on Hellguard?”  
  
“They crash-landed there. They attempted to hide their mistake rather than face the consequences of having breached the Neutral Zone. In our hospitality, we offered them permanent sanctuary on Hellguard.”  
  
“So you deny poaching them and holding them captive?”  
  
“Yes. And may I remind you even if they had been kidnapped, it could not be considered poaching, as Vulcans were not an endangered species at that time. Your alleged timeline is completely wrong.”  
  
“Ms. Charvanek. I’m going to get straight to the point. Were you or were you not in charge of the base on Hellguard?”  
  
“I was.”  
  
“So 517 people died under your command.”  
  
“That was not my fault. There was nothing that could have been done to prevent that. Even in your Starfleet, officers are lost in the line of duty. It is unavoidable.”  
  
“But these weren’t officers. And they weren’t in the line of duty. If we take your story at your word, these were stranded refugees. How do you justify their slaughter?”  
  
“I do not. They were not slau—“  
  
“How do you justify their torture?”  
  
“I did not—“  
  
“Why did you kill those people, Selevo?”  
  
“I—“  
  
“Did you rape them?”  
  
“No! I don’t—“  
  
“Did Saavik’s father ever say that?”  
  
“Enough!” She was breathing hard now, seething, her eyes fire. If she could have killed the whole room with a look, she would have done it.  
  
“I did not have them tortured. I did not have them killed. I did not have them raped. If any of those things happened while I was not there, I was never informed of them. I cannot be held responsible for the actions of everyone under my command. When an ensign commits murder, do you charge him or do you charge his captain?”  
  
The prosecutor wasn’t deterred. “Who made the decision to cease the experiments?”  
  
“Me. I did. As soon as I had the ability to do so, I put a stop to that horrible facility.”  
  
“You axed the project. You shut the colony down.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You locked the door and threw away the key.”  
  
“An inaccurate human metaphor, but essentially correct.”  
  
“You left all those kids to starve and didn’t even bat an eye.”  
  
“Y—I…”  
  
“You didn’t even unlock their cages,” she said, voice dripping with disgust. “Your own _daughter_.”  
  
“I was not there on the final day,” she said through clenched teeth.  
  
“But in the preliminary statements you said that you did everything you could to protect Saavik and get her back. So on the one day you actually have a chance to take her away from all this horribleness, you just don’t show up?”  
  
“I tried to be there. The higher-ups would not let me abandon my current assignment. I was on a long-term mission commanding the imperial flagship at the time, and have not had the chance to get away yet. I’m sure your Captain Kirk can confirm that that was my duty. It is, after all, how we met.”

* * *

“I would like to present to the court evidence sample 16.”  
  
A holograph flashed in the center of the courtroom. It was a rotating image of Saavik’s neck, bruised in angry purple and green fingerprints that wrapped around it. Her hair had been pulled up to fully show the damage. The holo had been taken in the harsh light of sickbay, and the starkness made the black brand mark on her neck seem that much more atrocious.  
  
“This is a holo of little Saavik Kirk, a girl of a mere six years of age. As you can see, someone attempted to strangle her. Thankfully, they were unsuccessful,” the prosecutor said. “I call Ensign Pavel Chekov to the stand.”  
  
Pavel swallowed, stood, straightened his suit jacket, and went up into the testifying box.  
  
“Mr. Chekov, you were a witness to this event, correct?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Please speak for the record,” she said.  
  
“Oh. Correct,” he said.  
  
“Can you please describe the incident for us?”  
  
“I was walking down the hallway when I saw a strange woman talking to Saavik, and Saavik looked terrified. I stopped to make sure nothing suspicious was going to happen. Saavik is Kirk and Spock’s daughter; she is like a niece to me, you see.  
  
“I heard the woman say that she is Saavik’s mother, and I thought, ‘that is strange,’ because you see, she was born on Hellguard, which is a despicable planet—“  
  
“Mr. Chekov, if you could get to the point, please,” the judge said.  
  
“Oh, right,” he blushed. “Anyway, the woman started Saavik away into the arboretum, and I followed to make sure she was safe, and it was a good thing too, because when I got there she was killing her! I phased her and called the captain immediately.”  
  
“Is the woman who did that in this room?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Can you identify her?”  
  
“Yes. It is her.” He pointed straight at Selevo.

* * *

“I call Saavik Kirk of the House of Spock to the stand.”  
  
Saavik took the stand nervously. She kept shifting in her uncomfortable dress. The prosecutor had said that it was important she look both cute and presentable, and Jim had said for humans, that meant wearing a dress, so she was wearing a dress. Her hair had been tied back in two curly pigtails tied with red bows. She was even wearing tights.  
  
She looked like a doll. She felt like a doll. Or maybe a puppet was more accurate. A very nervous puppet, who could very easily screw this up.  
  
Which was bad, because she wanted Mother to go to jail for the rest of her life.  
  
Apparently the Federation didn’t have the death penalty anymore, unlike the Romulan Empire. So eternal jail was the worst that they could do, to Saavik’s disappointment. She wouldn’t be punished as badly as what they could do back home.  
  
Home. No. No. The Empire was not home. Hellguard was not home. The Enterprise was her new home now. The Enterprise was home, she reminded herself firmly.  
  
The Enterprise was home and Mother was evil.  
  
“Ms. Kirk, can you identify the defendant?”  
  
“Yes. That’s my mother. The Commander.”  
  
“Your mother? So would you say that she raised you?”  
  
“Umm… No.”  
  
“No? Why not?”  
  
“She was never there?”  
  
“But you did interact with her, yes?”  
  
“Well, she was there sometimes. But not a lot. Not enough to have raised me.”  
  
“What was it like when she was there?”  
  
“Bad.”  
  
“Can you explain?”  
“She hurted me. All the time.”  
  
“How did she hurt you?”  
  
“With the zappy machine. And by making me not eat.”  
  
“You were frequently subjected to electric shocks? Is that what you’re saying?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“And you were denied food?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Were you given any reasons for this treatment?”  
  
“’Cause I was bad.”  
  
“You were bad?”  
  
“Uh-huh. I couldn’t do mind stuff always. My head would hurt too much. It was too hard. I didn’t know how to do some stuff either. I would make m’stakes a lot. And so I was punished.”  
  
“You were punished for any mistake that you would make?”  
  
“Uh-huh. And when I would look the moderators in the eye. And when I talked near them or moved too fast or walked too slow. But my legs are little, so...” Her jaw clenched.  
  
“Were your punishments always in the form of electric shock or denial of food?”  
  
“No. Sometimes she would just hit me. Or the moderators would, but only when she was there.”  
  
“Why do you think that was?”  
  
She shrugged. “Dunno. Cause she did?”  
  
“Did you suffer any long-term effects from this treatment?”  
  
“I don’t know what that means.”  
  
“When you finally got out of Hellguard, how were you different from other people?”  
  
“I didn’t know any words. I wasn’t good at talking. I needed to eat more. I was really sick at first—I would cough a lot and everything was super cold and I couldn’t breathe. I was tired.  
  
“Sometimes I have bad dreams. They’re scary. Sometimes I have to come get my daddies in the night because I waked up screaming or crying. I have to go see Dr. Singh two times a week. Tommy doesn’t have to do that. I hurted some people and that was bad. I’m sorry.”  
  
The prosecutor frowned, trying to figure out which parts of that were relevant and which parts weren’t. “Who is Dr. Singh?”  
  
“My therapist.”  
  
“And have you been diagnosed with anything?”  
  
“She says I have PSTE.”  
  
“PTSD?”  
  
“Yeah, that.”  
  
“Okay,” she said. “When you were first reunited with your mother, how did she react?”  
  
“What’s that word mean?”  
  
“Reunited? Oh. Um, when you first saw her again after leaving Hellguard.”  
  
“She killeded me.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Saavik put her hands around her throat and pantomimed choking.  
  
“Did she give you any indication as to why she did that?”  
  
“Nope. I must’ve been bad though.”  
  
“…Okay.”

* * *

“So what happens now?” Jim asked. He and some of the other parents and older witnesses were crowded around the prosecutor, hanging around just outside the courtroom.  
  
“Now, we wait for the jury to get back. This could take days. You’ll have to be patient,” she said.  
  
“Do you think we’ll win?” T’Penn asked.  
  
“I think we have a shot. The traumatized six-year-old won us a lot of sympathy. And T’Mai’s testimony was horrifying. There’s no way anybody can justify that.” She met their eyes. “I can’t say for sure. But it looks good.”


	31. T’hy’la

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adults are petty and Karen is the most stereotyped character I’ve ever written

Jim woke up with lazy warmth and sprawled out over Spock’s body, stretching and curling in to nuzzle at his neck, raining it with kisses. He started moving lower, down his collarbone and over his chest until he was teasing a nipple with his teeth and Spock woke with a soft gasp.  
  
Jim looked up and caught a solid three seconds of pure shock and arousal on his face before he even tried to slip back on his stoic Vulcan façade. Jim turned his attentions back to his mouth and kissed it away. Spock melted, putty in his hands.  
  
His hand snaked down his body to grab ahold of him, eliciting an aborted half-moan, half-gasp. Jim smirked against his lips. He wrapped his hand more tightly and moved it with maddening slowness, slipping his other hand down to press a finger inside of him. He got a real gasp this time.  
  
Buh-bye, Vulcan façade. This version of Spock was for Jim’s eyes only.  
  
“You are insatiable,” Spock said, breath coming quicker as Jim’s hand moved quicker. He was crouched over Spock now rather than laying on top of him. He grinned and inserted another finger, stretching further.  
  
“Only when it comes to you, babe,” he said. He reached for the bottle of lube on the nightstand. Spock pulled him down until their lips met and kissed him like it was the last time he ever would.  
  
He never knew.

* * *

“I’m going to go pick up Saavik from Karen’s place. You wanna come with?” Jim asked, pulling up his pants.  
  
There might be reporters.  
  
“Indeed,” Spock said.  
  
“Great,” Jim smiled.

* * *

“The kids are in the middle of a game of doctor, so why don’t you two come in, sit for a bit, have some coffee?” Karen asked.  
  
“Sure, I don’t see why not,” Jim said. Spock walked over to where Tommy and Saavik were playing in the next room.  
  
“Children, we will be leaving within half an hour. Please be ready to depart within that timeframe,” he said.  
  
“Aaaaww,” they both groaned.  
  
“Can’t we please have at least an hour?” Tommy asked. Spock looked to Jim, who shrugged.  
  
“Is that okay with you?” he asked Karen.  
  
“Of course. Stay as long as you’d like,” she said.  
  
She had been selling information on their personal lives to various tabloids and earning quite a few credits off of it. An hour’s conversation sounded perfect to her.  
  
Jim had figured that out three days ago. She was the only one who knew about the custody case that he could imagine leaking it to the press.  
  
Instead of confronting her about it, he and Spock had decided to use the situation to their advantage.  
  
“So how are things going with you two?” she asked politely, sipping coffee.  
  
“I suppose you heard about our ‘separation’?” Jim asked.  
  
She nodded sympathetically. “That must be so hard on all of you.”  
  
“It is not, given that the rumors of our separation are fallacious,” Spock said.  
  
“Really? You guys can tell me the truth, you know that, right? Your secret’s safe with me.”  
  
“There is no secret to share,” Jim said. “We really aren’t separated. That photo just caught us at a bad moment.”  
  
“Really? Because you both looked pretty… upset, for just another date night.”  
  
“I had just found a really long hair in my food and was going to go tell someone about it,” Jim confessed, really hoping he wouldn’t inadvertently damage the restaurant’s reputation.  
  
“Ohhh,” Karen said, nodding. She completely understood. Yelling at service workers just didn’t get the point across sometimes; she frequently had to speak to the manager of various establishments.  
  
Jim plastered on his fakest smile.  
  
“So everything is okay between you two?”  
  
“Indeed,” Spock said.  
  
“Well that’s good.”  
  
“So what about you, Karen? What’s been going on in your life?” Jim asked.  
  
“Oh, nothing much. I’ve been trying out this new diet that’s mostly kale and lemon juice—and wine, of course, couldn’t get through the day without my wine!” She laughed titteringly, and Jim joined in. Spock frowned.  
  
She blathered on for another forty-five minutes about her sister’s upcoming divorce and why her ex, Brad, was a douche. Jim decided to liven things up a bit by holding Spock’s hand and subtly playing with it, enjoying the little ways Spock would sometimes tense or relax when he moved his fingers a certain way, enjoying the flow of arousal and carefully-kept control he could feel coming from the other end of the bond.  
  
God, he could do this forever. Spock at his side, him touching him, Saavik happy and safe in the next room. This is how he wanted his life to go. He never wanted things to change.  
  
He felt a surge of hope and longing and sadness flow through the bond and he tamped down on his thoughts.

* * *

Spock laid out an array of cosmetics on the floor, along with mirrors and brushes. Jim was away hanging out with McCoy, it was just he and Saavik for now.  
  
“Saavik,” he said very seriously. “Since you have decided to learn the Vulcan ways and adhere to our culture, I shall now be instructing you in the art ofnn cosmetics, as my mother instructed me.”  
  
“Do all Vulcans wear make-up?” she asked innocently.  
  
“Most. It is logical to care for one’s appearance. To do so shows cleanliness and dignity.”  
  
“What’s dingitty?”  
  
“Dignity is the quality of being worthy of honor and respect.”  
  
“Oh.” She picked up the palette containing his favorite purple eyeshadow. “This is the stuff you put over your eyes all the time!”  
  
“Affirmative,” he said.  
  
“Can I try it?”  
  
“That is why I procured it. You may try any of these that you wish.”  
  
“Really?” Her eyes lit up.  
  
“Affirmative.”  
  
They spent the next hour trying out different colors and combinations. Saavik decided that like the deep red lipstick best, though she was not the greatest at applying it and ended up wobbling outside both of their lip lines on her two attempts. She was using the liquid eyeliner to draw a butterfly on Spock’s cheek when Jim walked in.  
  
His whole face lit up as he drank in the sight of the powdery mess they were both in. His family looked like sloppily done-up hookers, and Spock was a patient statue covered in bright, smudgy make-up. Affection swelled up in him. “What’s going on here?”  
  
“Saavik is experimenting with cosmetics,” Spock explained.  
  
“Daddy, make-up is logical!” she said.  
  
He grinned even wider. “It sure is, kiddo.”  
  
And in that moment, looking at Spock being an amazing dad after spending a whole week being as married to him as possible, he knew he was doomed, doomed in a way that had nothing to do with the bond or just the physical, doomed in the same way he had been the first time Saavik came to him with a nightmare.  
  
He was in love.

* * *

“Bones, I fucked up!” Jim called, bursting into his room.  
  
“Oh, what now?” he asked.  
  
“I think I’m in love with Spock.”  
  
Bones stared at him for a long, long moment.  
  
“And how exactly is that a problem? You _supposed_ to be in love when you’re married.”  
  
“Yeah, but I fucked it up! I told Spock no when he confessed his love to me.”  
  
“You what?!”  
  
He ran a hand through his hair anxiously. “I fucked up, I fucked up. I told him that it wasn’t worth it to give this a shot if we couldn’t promise forever. I thought it wouldn’t be fair to Saavik.”  
  
“And now?”  
  
“And now… Now I think I could promise forever.”  
  
“Okay. Well, what have you been doing since he told you he loved you? Have you even talked at all?”  
  
“We’ve been sleeping together.”  
  
Bones gave him a hard look.  
  
“But I made it very clear that it doesn’t mean anything.”  
  
He put his head in his hands. “Oh, Jim.”  
  
“I know!” he said. “What do I do?”  
  
“I don’t know, maybe something crazy like talk to him?”  
  
Jim sat down. “Bones… Have you ever been in love?”  
  
“Kid, I’ve been married. Real married, not whatever the shit you’re doing is.”  
  
“How do you tell someone that? That you’re in love with them?” he asked. “It doesn’t seem like… like any words are good enough.”  
  
He considered that for a few minutes. And then, “Maybe you don’t need to use any words.”

* * *

“Spock. Can I talk with you?”  
  
“Of course,” he said, setting down his datapadd.  
  
Jim took a seat next to him on the couch. He took a deep breath. “Meld with me.”  
  
Spock froze. He wanted nothing more. But to touch Jim’s mind so intimately, to feel his presence fully, to allow him to see the depth of Spock’s love and devotion, to feel his revulsion at the emotions Spock himself wished he didn’t have, to feel the complete and utter lack of reciprocation on his side… it would be torture.  
  
It was one thing to touch his body and say it meant nothing. It was another thing to touch his mind.  
  
“Perhaps that would not be wise,” he said.  
  
Jim took his hand and guided it up to his meld points, keeping his own hand on top of it and looking at Spock with so much gentleness. “I have something to show you. I promise you won’t regret it.”  
  
His resolve wasn’t strong enough for that.  
  
He entered his mind.  
  
It was a rush of bliss and sensation. It was euphoric, orgasmic, better even than last time as their minds fit together with perfect ease, perfectly shaped to one another, like two halves of a whole, complementary, completing each other, _ni’var_.  
  
It was glowing, resplendent, transcendental, like flying on pure joy. The bond hummed and burned between them, a pleasant tingling.  
  
And then the initial shock wore off and unlike their pon farr meld, this one was given time to settle, time to be explored.  
  
Spock felt joy and affection and hope and something that ran far deeper than all three, something that threaded the two of them together in a way quite like their bond but also not like it all. Something everlasting.  
  
A traitorous bubble of hope escaped before he was able to suppress it. A wave of emotion came over from Jim: guilt and affection and reassurance and that same indescribable deep feeling.  
  
_That’s called love, Spock._  
  
He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t dare. Perhaps this was a dream, or—  
  
_This is real. I’m real, what I feel for you is real. I love you._  
  
He was hesitant. _What do you mean by that?_ There were many different kinds of love. Familial love, friendly love, romantic love. Humans used the word lightly.  
  
_How about all of the above?_  
  
_T’hy’la._  
  
_What’s that?_  
  
_It is… It is a Vulcan word that can mean friend, brother, lover._  
  
_Soulmate,_ Jim thought. _Are we… Is that what I am to you?_  
  
He could not lie. _Yes_.  
  
His decision was made. It was so clear now. _Marry me. For real this time. Be my husband, Spock, I want to spend the rest of my life with you._  
  
_Yes._


	32. Revenge

They decided to tell Saavik first, on the basis that it would affect her the most, so she had the most right to know.

They sat her down in the suite’s livingroom, unsure how she would take it. Jim was nervous. Spock was not nervous, because he was Vulcan and Vulcans don’t get nervous. Spock was, therefore, calm.

“Saavik,” Jim said. “Your father and I have something we want to tell you.”

She looked up at them curiously.

“We have initiated a romantic relationship,” Spock said.

She gasped, and Jim cringed back reflexively, about to leap to an explanation when suddenly they were both tackled by a very small being. She tried her best to wrap her arms around them both, which was made slightly easier by how close they were sitting.

“Yay!” she said. “My daddies love each other! Does this mean you’ll be married for real now?”

“We plan to wed in the human fashion sometime in the spring,” Spock said.

“Yes,” Jim said. He wrapped his family in a big hug.

* * *

 

“Captain, what is it? Why did you call us all here?” Chekov asked.

“Is it about the trial?” Sulu asked.

“Nothing’s wrong, don’t worry, We have some news we want to tell you guys.” He looked to Spock.

Before he could even so much as open his mouth, Uhura blurted out “You’re dating.”

Chekov gasped. Bones took a sip from glass to hide his smirk at having known before anyone else, in his eyes.

“Congratulations, Captain!” Scotty said.

“Actually, close, but no cigar,” Jim said. “We’re getting married!”

“You’re already married,” Sulu said.

“Yeah, Vulcan-married. Now we’re going to be human-married too.”

“I’m so happy for you guys,” Uhura said.

“Yeah, it’s about time you finally figured things out,” Bones said.

“What do you mean by that?” Jim asked.

“Are you kidding me? You two have been in—You know what? Forget I said anything.”

“…Okay,” he said, obviously confused. His crew laughed.

* * *

 

“I don’t know what to tell you, Selevo. It looks like you’re going to lose,” her defense attorney said.

“That is unacceptable,” she said. “I refuse to spend the rest of my days rotting in a Federation prison. I have an empire to get back to.”

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

Fine then. But Selevo wasn’t going to go down without a fight. And if she was going to jail anyway, then at the very least she was going to exact her vengeance upon Spock first.

* * *

 

Saavik was walking the short distance to Grandpa Sarek’s suite when she heard it.

“Help! Somebody please help me!”

“Tommy?” she asked, creeping forward slowly. The voice was coming from inside a room just down a little hall.

A gasp. “Saavik! Please help me!”

“I’m coming, Tommy!”

She pushed the heavy door in and rushed inside.

Selevo slammed the door shut and turned a phaser on her, flicking off the synthesized recording. “Sit in the chair and stay very still.”

* * *

 

The message pinged in Spock’s inbox shortly thereafter. It was encrypted, on a secure channel, and from an anonymous sender. He inspected it thoroughly before opening it, but he couldn’t learn much. The sender knew what they were doing.

The video opened to be some grainy holo of a darkened storage room, presumably somewhere inside the terminal. In the center of the screen, Saavik sat in a metal chair, tied up with Romulan-grade chains. Selevo stood behind her, stroking her hair and pressing a phaser to her temple, her face just out of view.

Saavik looked pale as a ghost. Spock had never seen her that terrified before. She was deathly still and her eyes an endless void of terror.

“Spock. I assume this message reached you well,” Selevo’s voice filtered through, undisguised. Why bother, the camera had already seen most of her anyway.

“I have your daughter. If you wish to see her alive again, you and Kirk will come unarmed and alone to secure storage room 17. If you contact the authorities, I will know and I will kill her. If you come wearing bugs or trackers or communicators of any kind, I’ll kill her. If anyone comes into this room but you two in the manner I have specified, I will kill them and then I’ll kill her. If you attempt any tricks, I’ll kill her. If you are not both here within one hour, I will cut off one of her fingers and send it to you so that you know that I am serious.”

The video cut out and promptly deleted itself, all traces of its existence instantly erased from the computer.

Spock swallowed and found his mouth to be dry.

“Jim,” he said. Then, louder, “Jim!”

Jim appeared out of nowhere almost instantly, concerned by Spock’s tone of voice and the feeling that was deeply wrong in both of his bonds. “What is it? What happened?”

He had never seen Spock so shaken before. He had seen strong emotions make his control slip a few times, but fear had never been one of those emotions. He had faced down death and destruction more times than Jim could count without ever hesitating. He was dreading to meet whatever it was that was capable of terrifying him so deeply.

“Selevo has taken Saavik hostage. Her only demand is that we come, unarmed and without audio relays, to storage room 17.”

Jim went completely still, completely numb, and asked with icy, deadly calm, “How do you know this?”

“She sent me a video.”

“Let me see it.”

“It has already been deleted.”

“You deleted it?! Are you bat-shit crazy, man—“

“No, I did not delete. It was self-deleting. It automatically erased itself after being viewed.”

Jim breathed. “Okay. Okay! What  _exactly_  did she say? Tell me every word and don’t leave any details out.”

And so Spock did, grateful for his eidetic memory. He relayed every word out of Selevo’s mouth, every stroke of Saavik’s hair, the nearness of the phaser, the apparent strength of the chains, the darkness of the surroundings lit only by a single bulb. Jim listened to it all stoically, that cold, determined fury back on his face.

He was going to kill her. He was going to personally murder Selevo for this. No force in the galaxy would be able to stop him.

“What do you recommend we do?” Spock finished.

His thoughts raced.

Contact the admiralty and await their advice and help. Selevo’s monitoring their communications and watching their movements. She knows instantly. She kills Saavik.

Alert security that something is off in storage room 17. Someone goes to check it out. Selevo kills them the second they walk through the door. She kills Saavik.

Go to the room wearing a bug linked to the starbase’s security headquarters. They hear every word and bust the place in before anything bad can happen. Selevo can get off one shot, maybe two at the most before she’s taken down. She kills Saavik.

Wait out the remaining forty-five minutes trying to come up with a better plan. Selevo cuts one of Saavik’s fingers off. They can’t think of anything anyway. She kills Saavik.

Going in there guns blazing and try to take her down before she has a chance to do anything. She only possibly kills Saavik.

Not an acceptable risk.

Comply with her demands and present themselves for whatever she wants to do to them. Most likely torture, possibly death. Saavik is scarred for life yet again. She grows up without her parents. Selevo lets her live because that’s exactly her type of vengeance.

Saavik lives.

“I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

* * *

 

The walk to the storage room was somber to say the least. Jim kept thinking someone would stop them, that someone would know, that it was on their faces somehow.

How had they let this happen? How had they been so careless? They had known that a dangerous individual with a vendetta against them was loose in the starbase, and yet they had let their daughter roam free, unsupervised.

It was a fifteen second walk from their place to Sarek’s. Fifteen seconds.

Barely down the hallway.

The walk to the storage room was an eternity and way too fast. They opened the door and walked inside.

It swung shut behind them.

Selevo raised her phaser from Saavik’s temple to point straight at them. “Hello, Spock, Captain. It’s so good to see you.”

She shot Jim and he dropped in a heap. 

“No!” Saavik sobbed.

Spock dropped to his knees and gathered up his husband in his arms, feeling numb and cold.

A pulse.

It was only a stun.

“He’s alive,” he said, not sure if he was telling himself or Saavik.

“Of course. I have no intention of killing him. We’re going to need him alive for this next part,” Selevo said. “Wipe the last 109 days from his memory.”

109 days. It had been 109 days since the rescue mission on Hellguard. Jim would forget everything that had happened since then. He would forget that he had gotten married. He would forget that he loved Spock. He would forget Saavik entirely. He would forget this little family of his and they would be gone from his mind forever.

“I cannot. No being can take that many memories from another,” he said. 

“Yes, you can,” she said, the phaser back against Saavik’s head again. “You just won’t survive the process.”


	33. Justice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence and character death. Please actually listen to that one, because it's pretty bad.

Spock decided his best bet was to stall. It had worked with her the last time. If he could get her talking, maybe then he would have time to come up with a plan.

If he was to die in this room anyway, then he would rather die without having damaged Jim in that way. Erasing his memories was unacceptable. 

He knew his husband was an honorable man. He would continue to raise Saavik even if he did not know her. The real damage would be to the child, who would lose one parent entirely and be stuck with the amnesiac ghost of another, her own father who would look at her without any recognition in his eyes. Who would forget that she had truly been family to him, that he had loved her, that he had carved out a new home with her and his now-dead first officer, because that would be all he would remember Spock as.

He thought of so many moments that would be lost to eternity if he did this. That would have no one to remember them, even though they had meant so much to him. To them both.

No. He would never comply with her demands. He would die first.

If he couldn’t think of something else.

If Selevo didn’t find a way to absolutely force him to do it.

If she didn’t simply kill Jim for his refusal or after she had made Spock do that horrible thing.

He could not allow himself to think this way. He needed to focus. Manipulation was not typically his forte. It would be better if Jim were the one doing this.

“Why are you doing this, Selevo?” he asked.

“Vengeance,” she said casually. “But you already knew that. Stop wasting time and meld with him already.”

It occurred to him that this would be the last time they ever melded.

“Please… do not make me do this in front of Saavik.” It would be better if she blindfolded or perhaps unconscious. There will likely be screaming. She shouldn’t have to watch and hear him die.

She would probably blame herself, he realized. In the past, she was always hurt because she was bad. She associated all pain with her own faults. She would think that she had caused this by allowing herself to get captured.

That was unacceptable.

All of this was unacceptable. Spock hoped it was some horrible dream that he would wake up from soon.

“No. You think I care if the child has nightmares over this? The entire point is that she has to watch,” Selevo said, stroking her hair like she was a pet rather than a person. Saavik’s breaths were shaky and fast, her eyes massive.

A horrible, horrible idea occurred to him, but it was an idea nonetheless. He remembered the first night he had met her and pitched his voice low. “Isn’t there anything else you… desire?”

She stepped forward until she was inches away from him, her phaser pressed right up against his heart, their breath mingling. “I desire… to see your blood pouring from your ears as your brain melts under the agony of wiping your bondmate’s memories.”

She pulled back and slapped him.

“You think I’m an idiot? You think I’ll fall for the same thing twice? Quit stalling and meld with him already,” she said. “Although… Maybe I will take you right here first, put on a little show for dear Saavik, let her know how far her precious father would debase himself.”

Spock’s blood ran cold.

He had somehow made things worse.

Jim would be so much better at this.

Perhaps… Perhaps if he could implant a suggestion in her mind, render her unable to move, he could simply take the phaser from her hand and walk away. He had given people suggestions before—a couple times on missions, nothing too unreasonable. The problem would be doing it fast enough and without her noticing the motion of his hands.

He clasped them behind his back in a false display of modesty. 

_Hold still._

Selevo rolled her eyes impatiently. She adjusted the settings on her phaser and set it to rest over Saavik’s bond hands. “Meld with him right now or I will blast your little girl’s hands off.”

Too late.

Throat tight, Spock stepped forward. He lifted Jim’s head into his lap and set his fingers on his meld points.

This would kill him. This was going to kill him, in more ways than one.

 _Hold still,_  he thought, desperately holding out hope.

“Three, two—“ Selevo began counting. Without further hesitation, he entered his mind.

It was blank. Empty. Inactive. It felt wrong and invasive to be there, even if the reason for his intrusion hadn’t been so despicable.

For a while, he just stayed there, soaking in his last few moments with Jim’s mind. Jim’s beautiful, amazing, defenseless psi-null mind.

He had never wished so strongly that humans were telepathic. That Jim was at least conscious so he could say one final goodbye.

“I’m not seeing any pain,” Selevo said. “If I don’t get signs of progress within the next five seconds, I  _will_  shoot Saavik.”

Spock began erasing memories.

He worked chronologically. Their conversation before coming here. Jim’s proposal and his acceptance. The last night in bed they’d shared. This whole beautiful, excruciating week.

He was screaming. So was someone else.

Saavik.

Sobbing, shouting incoherently in Romulan, thrashing against her chains.

A psychic force shoved its way into his mind and threw him across the room, crash-landing into a stack of boxes. The meld broke dangerously fast, through force rather than precision.

He opened his eyes and Selevo was lying on the floor, dead, her head burst open in chunks of gray matter and dark green blood, shards of skull and ripped up skin. Saavik was panting in the chair, teeth clenched and bared.

Eshak. The killing gift. To take another’s life using your mind alone.

A sob escaped her.

Spock rushed over and drew the key from Selevo’s pocket, fumbling to undo her chains. He pulled her out of the chair and held onto her while she cried her eyes out.

* * *

 

Jim awoke in the starbase’s sickbay to a fussing Bones and a concerned Saavik and Spock.

“Dad!”

“Hello, sweetheart,” he smiled bravely.

“Are you okay?”

“I sure am. Nothing gets me down, Saavik, I’m invincible.”

“Okay, now that you’ve seen that he’s fine, why don’t we give your parents some privacy? I’m sure they have some things they’d like to discuss,” Bones said. Saavik looked at him dubiously, then bit her lip and looked back to Jim.

“Promise you won’t die while I’m gone?” she asked.

He carefully held back his stricken reaction to that. “I promise,” he said.

She gave him a warning look, then hopped off the biobed and followed Bones out the door.

“What the hell happened, Spock? Where am I? Are we back on the starbase? How come I don’t remember getting here? Why am I in sickbay? The sex wasn’t  _that_  rough. I feel like I got hit with a sledgehammer.”

“You were stunned via phaser. That should account for the physical unease.”

“Someone stunned me? Why?” They must have done it from behind. That would explain why he had no memories of it happening. He wondered how long he had been out for.

And also what he had done to warrant getting stunned.

“Jim… What is the last thing you remember?”

Which totally wasn’t a terrifying question to be asked.

“We were on the shuttle coming back from New Vulcan. You had just had your, uh, your pon farr. But last I remember we had just boarded and we were four days out. How are we already back at the starbase? Wait, this is the starbase, right?”

“This is the starbase. You are suffering from induced amnesia. You have forgotten the past ten days.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. It was only ten days. He wasn’t missing months or years or anything. As far as amnesia went, that was pretty lucky. How much could even happen in ten days, really?

“Well, that’s good, I guess. That it’s only ten days, I mean. So what’d I miss?”

“Saavik gave her testimony in the Hellguard trial,” Spock said, figuring he would ease him into it all.

“How’d it go? Wait, wasn’t she like, the last one to testify? How’d the trial turn out? What’s the verdict?”

“Saavik gave an excellent testimony. It was incredibly damning and it seemed certain to land Selevo in prison for many consecutive life sentences.”

“I’m sensing a but,” Jim said, dread forming in the pit of his stomach.

“There was never any verdict.”

“What do you mean, there was never a verdict? Did she get a mistrial?”

“No. She was killed before the jury made their decision.”

“What?” Jim asked. Apparently a lot could happen in ten days. “Did she get hit by a hovercar or something?”

“No. Saavik killed her.”

 _“What?!”_  he shrieked. “Don’t tell me my little girl’s gonna be facing fucking  _murder charges.”_

“She will not. It was self-defense.”

“Self-defense? Selevo tried to kill her?” he asked. “Wait, no, don’t answer that. I’m going to stop asking questions and why don’t you just tell me the whole story.”

Spock hesitated. They had not even been speaking to each other on the shuttle back from New Vulcan. It was doubtful that Jim would believe him if he said they had gotten engaged two days ago. He was hardly able to believe it himself. He still had the niggling doubt in the back of his mind that perhaps this was all a dream.

“Perhaps it would be best if I showed you my own memories through a mind meld,” he said.

Jim stiffened. “Aren’t those… intimate? Like, family-and-spouses only intimate? I get that we had one while you were… you know, but that was—There were mitigating circumstances.”

“You are my spouse,” Spock said.

“Yeah, but… not like that. Not for real,” he said. “Look, Spock, I don’t know what you’re thinking here, but that whole pon farr thing? It doesn’t change anything between us. Believe me, I’d love to give this thing a shot, and maybe we could in a different universe, but here, now? It’s just not worth the risk. I’m sorry.”

“Jim. A mind meld is the most efficient and accurate way to transfer mnemonic information. I urge you to please reconsider your stance,” he said. And then, knowing what would work, he added, “It does not have to mean anything emotionally. It can be a simple sharing of information. Melds are regularly initiated for purely professional purposes by mind healers and pihloras. I can assure you there will be no emotional transference.”

Jim licked his lips. “Alright. But it doesn’t mean anything, okay? We’re just sharing information. Like talking.”

Relief and careful hope flooded through Spock, and he raised his hand to Jim’s meld points, closing his eyes. “My mind to your mind, your thoughts to my thoughts…”

He showed him everything. He showed them walking right into Selevo’s trap and everything he had felt in those brief seconds he thought Jim was dead. He showed him the humiliation and desperate fear of that encounter. He showed what he had been made to do, and he apologized a thousand times,  _sorrysorrysorrysorry._  He showed him Selevo’s body lying broken and bloody on the floor, Saavik glaring down at it in fury and terror.

He showed him them tangled together in the throes of passion. He showed him soft kisses and gentle touches. He showed him himself playing with Spock’s hand at Karen’s table, driving him insane. He showed him their argument and himself storming off. He showed him their last mind meld and the things that had been said, that had been felt.

He felt answering shock, understanding, acceptance… warmth.

_I love you?_

_…_

_I love you._


	34. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, the last chapter in this fic. Thank you so much to everyone who commented on it, you really kept me inspired to keep writing. Hope you enjoyed!

**4 months later**

* * *

 

“Doctor, I require your assistance in a matter,” Spock said, walking into McCoy’s office.

“This oughta be good. What is it?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

“I have been researching human wedding traditions.”

“If you’re gonna ask me to be your best man, I can’t, I’m already Jim’s.”

“Lieutenant Uhura is my best man. That is not the matter of which I intended to inquire.”

“Then what is it?”

“The vows.”

“Ah,” he said. “You found out you have to write those yourself, did ya?” 

“Indeed,” he said. “I am uncertain as to what exactly they are supposed to consist of.”

“Oh, just pretty much expressions of devotion and undying love and all that jazz. Just talk about how he makes you feel.”

“I confess I am inexperienced in matters of emotional expression.”

“I’m not going to write your vows for you, Spock.”

“I am not asking you to. I am merely asking for your assistance.”

“Can’t you just speak from the heart? You know, that green thing where your liver’s supposed to be?”

“A heart is a pulmonary organ incapable of vocalization. As a medical professional, it is expected that you know this.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not gonna fall for that, I know you know what I mean.”

“I am certain that I do not, doctor.”

“And can it with that ‘doctor’ crap. You’ve known me for how many years now? Call me Leonard.”

“3.57.”

“What?”

“I have known you for 3.57 years. Doctor.”

“You want my help or not, asshole?”

“I am not an a—“

“Oh my god, yes you are. Now shut up and let me see what you’ve got written so far.”

* * *

 

The wedding was held aboard the Enterprise, of course, and this time both grooms’ families were there. As the next highest ranking officer when both the ship’s captain and first mate were unavailable, Scotty was officiating.

Saavik made a beautiful flower girl, but instead of carrying a bouquet down the aisle, she got to carry her little sister—a cuddly, dark-skinned Vulcan baby named T’Manda, after her grandmother.

And it wasn’t that Chekov was crying but Chekov was crying.

“My dear guests,” Scotty began, a proud smile on his face. “We are here today to witness the joining of two souls, that of James Tiberius Kirk and S’chn T’Gai Spock. Now, you may know that they are already married, but they love each other so much that they wanted to do it twice.”

A few chuckles escaped from the crowd.

“These two people were bonded to each other long ago. They have been tied together through thick and thin, through the best and worst that life has to offer them. They were married long before they were actually married. And now, for the vows.”

Spock looked at Jim solemnly. “James Tiberius Kirk, I vow to love and cherish and honor you for the rest of my life. You have brought me great joy and great sadness, and changed the entire course of my life by your presence in it. I love you. I always will.”

Jim smiled brightly at Spock. “S’chn T’Gai Spock,” he said. “I’m gonna marry the hell out of you.”

They slipped rings on each other’s fingers, Jim’s hands lingering purposefully, knowing that this was the real wedding kiss for Spock. Then Scotty gave them permission and they kissed on the lips and it was sweet and chaste and a promise.

“By the power vested in me by Starfleet Command, I now pronounce you two married!”

Their lips found each other again and Jim started fulfilling his promise.


End file.
